


A Work In Progress

by miabicicletta



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Moments of truth, Past cases, Self-Deception, Sherlock Holmes is growing up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-03
Updated: 2016-01-03
Packaged: 2018-05-11 04:27:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5613916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miabicicletta/pseuds/miabicicletta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Summary: <b>Ennui</b> | Noun | \ˌän-ˈwē\ | <i>1. a lack of spirit, enthusiasm, or interest 2. A feeling of listlessness and dissatisfaction.</i> Humid with a chance of coronal mass ejection. Kandinsky 116—An artist of a burning world (oil, tears, ash). LUSH Dream Cream, lingering. The Criminal Justice Act of 2003, [Secs. 13-17]. <i>I got me a job and put my money away / but I got debts no honest man can pay</i> – Bruce Springsteen, “Atlantic City.” </p><p>Or, a few days in the life of Sherlock Holmes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Cover illustration

**Author's Note:**

  * For [noisymouse (queencockroach)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/queencockroach/gifts).



> Author’s note: Apologies to NASA, the European Space Agency, et al. Sir Stephen Hawking. Nike. Renzo Piano. OMD/Rem Koolhaas. Bruce Springsteen. Modernist art fans. The British criminal justice system. The Flaming Lips. London Borough of Hackney. Cheryl Sandberg. Almost all of them fall under Sherlock Holmes’ troublesome gaze.
> 
> Huge thanks to everyone who played a part in bringing this story together, especially Ora, and MrsMCrief. Also to the amazing ship hero, [Amalia%20Kensington](http://archiveofourown.org/users/amaliak01/pseuds/Amalia%20Kensington) aka artbylexie for continuing to be an all-around rock star.
> 
> Also, guys, how amazingly talented is [noisymouse](http://archiveofourown.org/users/queencockroach/profile)? She's such a talent, I can't even believe she illustrated this little jaunt. Huge hugs and kudos to her!


	2. Friday

* * *

 “Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they are finished.”

-Dan Gilbert, [Ted Radio Hour | “Beauty and the Brain” Ted 2014](http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_you_are_always_changing), Vancouver

* * *

 

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* * *

 

 

_**Friday** _

The light vacillated between 508–526 THz, slipping in through twin translucent barriers. Source of radiation: G-type main-sequence category. Location: approximate distance 1.496×108 km. Origin: proton-proton chain reaction [Bethe, 1967]— the nuclear fusion of two 1H nuclei (protons only) into deuterium, whereby one proton transformed to a neutron, releasing positron plus neutrino. Subsequent proton fusion then resulted in a single diproton, quickly followed by beta-plus decay into said deuterium. The reaction occurred around 9.2×1037 times each second, converting about 3.7×1038 protons into alpha particles (helium nuclei) every second (out of a total of ~8.9×1056 available), or about 6.2×1011 kg/s. The result careened for 490s across the relatively dense solar disk, striking the Kàrmàn atmospheric delineator short nano moments before it registered upon the optic nerve. _Fiat lux_.

Which was to say that sunlight was shining through a window on Sherlock Holmes, who, having reached the present-most point in Professor Hawking’s excessively non-brief history of time, was slouched in his chair at Baker Street, considering the natural order of events in his tidy(ish) corner of the universe.

He thunked his head back upon the chair. _Dull_.

Outside, Day...something of an unending swell of heat and humidity pressed on. The streets stank of exhaust and petrol and garbage, heightened by a summertime tide of gawping, swarming crowds. Hell, he felt, was not always other people, but was certainly comprised of the ones who walked slowly, clogging London’s arteries to bursting, while leaving a miasma of body odor in their wake.

Weighed down by tedium, he considered once more the discarded book on his lap. A longer history than the title suggested which tested his patience—already thin enough to begin with where astronomical matters were concerned, frankly. That it also happened to be nauseatingly romantic, even for a generalist text, chafed him further. 

John probably liked it. 

Sherlock heaved a sigh and flung the book indecorously into the fireplace.

Tracing the lower edge of his lip with his index finger, he released a long breath through his nose, and folded his hands below his chin, confronting the issues awaited him in the coming days, reframing the current state of events.

Hemp-based canvas burned at 123 C. The speed of light in a vacuum was equal to 299.792 458 m/s. The— 

He scowled. Well, _The Molly Problem_ , for lack of a better term. He glanced at his iPhone, confirming that, yes, in fact, Raz had not responded to the text he’d sent hours ago. He grit his teeth in annoyance. Raz had to be checking. Millennials never went anywhere without their phones. The crack of ligamenture rang through the dim, humid flat. A wave of questions, queries, quandaries weighed on his mind. Chief among them was this: Somewhere in Wormwood Scrubs, Jeremy Hyde was counting the hours till Monday morning.

On the pavement below, a large vehicle passed, disrupting the surrounding air currents. The curtain fluttered. A shaft of light caught a reflective surface, sending a brilliant bolt of light across his face. Suddenly weary, Sherlock replayed the conversation he’d had with his brother the day prior.

Mrs. Hudson had clucked and cooed over the tea tray neither Sherlock nor Mycroft had wanted, though neither had possessed the inclination or energy to refuse. The quintessential offering clattered to the table as Mrs. Hudson announced, “Oh, it’s _beastly_ out, isn’t it, Mr. Holmes?”

Mycroft considered the steaming tea with distaste, crossed his legs and folded his hand upon one unfavorably regarded knee. “Quite. I despise linen.”

Mrs. Hudson patted his shoulder. “Not your best look, pet.” She tutted down the steps, after a ringing mobile.

The landing echoing with the tunes of Bruce Springsteen, Mycroft had stared, aghast. “The landlady called me _pet_.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Sherlock responded without looking up from his tablet. “You’ve hardly enough hair to be considered one.”

His brother rolled his eyes.

Sherlock tossed the tablet aside, folded his fingers. Locked gaze with the enemy. “So. You’re here.”

Mycroft shrugged with self-evidence. “You rang, didn’t you?”

“I did, didn’t I?” Sherlock, parroted.

“You can imagine my surprise.”

“This solar storm whatever,” Sherlock breezed on, jumping to his feet. He paced the ratty Persian, the heels of his John Lobb’s worrying the threadbare carpet with each step. “What are you doing about it?”

“Doing?” Mycroft asked. He shrugged, demonstrably disaffected. “Nothing, as far as I’m aware. Beyond research, anyway.”

“You’re not concerned?”

“Oh yes. Terribly concerned,” Mycroft replied disingenuously, voice flat and unmodulated.

Sherlock had spun on his heel, countered. “International disaster, threat to human life, not to mention the possible devastation of the entire European pastry industry imminent, and you’re playing games with your little brother? You’re _hardly_ concerned.”

“I just said–”

“Pastries, across the globe—"

Mycroft groaned. “It’s _not_ my area, Sherlock. At any rate, what does it matter? Solar dynamics? Hardly a subject you’ve ever troubled yourself to bother with before.” He gestured to an unsteady pile of academic journals. “Or am I to take it you’ve developed a newfound hobby? Stargazing, are we?” He raised a brow. “Romantic, brother mine.”

Sherlock grit his teeth, unwilling to be baited. He narrowed his eyes, tapping his fingers furiously. “Spectral stellar irradiance off the charts. Seriously? You’re not worried?”

Mycroft bent his head, relenting in deference. “Publically, we are acknowledging a certain amount of risk. However, no. I am not. I’ve quite enough to worry about without bringing a statistical hiccup into the mix,” he finished, setting cup in lap primly. “Not when it comes to natural phenomena functioning on an fundamentally different order of magnitude. Revisit your Newtonian dynamics, Sherlock. Inertia will win out; this is not the end of the world.”

Sherlock gripped his wrist in one hand, piqued. “Then why are you _here_?”

Mycroft pursed his lips, ignoring the question. Instead he elaborated on the hypothetical at hand. “I have to wonder: Do you think so little of me, Sherlock, that if _actually_ faced with certain, life-altering peril, you imagine I would spend my final hours without the company of my cherished little brother?”

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “I repeat: why are you here?” he growled, punctuating each word.

A pejorative smile. “ _Cherishing_.”

Sherlock turned away, irritated to be irritated, and far more so than he usually was with his brother’s dramatics. _Why?_

Mycroft drew a hand to his face, leaned head in hand, idly considered the handle of his brolly. “But since you asked—The ESA, CERN, Max Planck Institute, not to mention NASA, NOAA, and the Canadian Space Agency—”

“Oh, well, if the _Canadians_ are on the case…”

His brother’s face flashed a look of annoyance. “They are _all_ looking into it. Specialists the world over.”

Sherlock narrowed his eyes. “Of course they are. That’s what space scientists do, isn’t it? The whole field is ‘looking up.’”

“Yes. Heavenly, I imagine,” Mycroft said, repugnant. “So: There. Several dozen technical institutes and bygone government entities are dealing with it. So I don’t have to. Ask one of them if you must.”

Sherlock threw out his hands in frustration. “And if we meet a worst-case scenario?”

Mycroft gestured with one hand, nonchalant. “We all die, I imagine.”

He heaved a short, irritable huff. “Brilliant.”

Tired of the subject, and likely for being dragged from his den of vipers for a thought experiment regarding the weather in space, Mycroft had thus pulled himself to his feet, straightened his jacket and announced, “There is not going to _be_ any catastrophe, Sherlock. It’s an unusual event, yes. Unprecedented, even. But we are far from the precipice of annihilation.” He droned the flat, knowing drone of the Older Brother, a voice Sherlock couldn’t ever remember Mycroft _not_ having. “I’m not sure what the point of this angst is. ”

Sherlock had sprung to his feet, his legs twitchy and restless. “The fact remains that, at present, we are residents of an indefensible island society standing in the way of a sustained outpouring of highly charged nanoparticles capable of rendering all data infrastructure across the whole of the Northern Hemisphere, if not planet, obsolete. You’d be a fool not to be somewhat unnerved.”

“This is not the backwater of some antipodean archipelago, Sherlock. We’re perfectly capable of–”

“I don’t mean England. I meant _humanity_!”

Sherlock collapsed stiffly across the length of the sofa, folding his arms stubbornly across his chest. “You know me, Mycroft. Life isn’t worth living without WiFi.”

Mycroft’s face pinched. He half turned, suspicious. “What’s gotten into you?”

“I’m _hot_!” Sherlock shouted in reply.

Mycroft gave him a last, searching look—a strange one, probing, uncertain. He tapped his umbrella. “Then go _cool off_ ," he said. And had left with as much ceremony as he’d arrived.

 

* * *

 

Bands of sun and shadow striped across the floor. Bars. The spectre of Jeremy Hyde loomed in his thoughts. He’d be expected to be there. The family. The original officers. A statement?

A spoon clattered across the tabletop, interrupting his reverie.

Sherlock scowled at the ceiling. _Why_ was John here?

He sat up, rubbed his face.

“Oh, good. You’re awake.” John announced, fiddling with his phone. “Wasn’t looking forward to rousing a sleeping dragon.”

His mouth was dry. “Case?” he supposed.

“Case,” John affirmed.

He made a derisive sound. John glanced up. “Don’t start. You haven’t had one for a few weeks, which means it’s time for me to be–”

“Annoying.”

“–preemptive before the walls get–” John waved a hand out. “I dunno, Swiss-ed.”

Sherlock glanced up. “How do you know?”

“How do I know you put holes in the walls when you’re bored?” John’s eyes remained fixed on his mobile.

“That I haven’t been on a case.”

John looked up over his phone. Sherlock estimated his expression was caught somewhere between amused and exasperated. “For someone with uncrackable passcodes, your security is shit. You leave your email open on my laptop _every time you use it_. Get up, get dressed. Client will be here in an hour.”

He frowned, glancing at his own mobile. Still no reply from Raz. He shot off a rapid text to Wiggins, asking him to find out what was going on. He drank tea as he shaved, and listened through the open washroom door as John read the client email. Art theft. _Yes. Spectacular. Brilliant_ , he thought uncharitably at his yet-unseen client.

In fact, he had reviewed the case already and begun a minimal amount of research (or would if Raz would _return his text messages_ …) As a trope, overall, it was as dull and obvious as anything these days. Four. Five, possibly, though only on account of the lab work which would be required.

His hand froze halfway to his face. At the thought of the lab, he was confronted once more with the troubling matter of The Molly Problem. More troubling still, the continued absence of a solution.

Sherlock looked himself in the mirror. His face felt as familiar as ever, and yet...not. He felt a voyeuristic sense of detachment as he finished washing and shrugged himself into his armor, studying his motile mechanics, feeling as though he were not an active participant in the scene in which he stood.  


The stiff fabric fell in hard lines against his skin. His uniform, such as it was: Clinical white, matte charcoal. Stark, monochromatic colors, like rules. Balenciaga, Alexander Wang; names which meant little to him. The persona (“Go be Sherlock Holmes,” Inner John commanded) grounded him in the face of his—God, there _really_ was no other word for it, was there?—angst.

Beyond that, he had not other words for the mercurial emotions at work on him, which perturbed him further.

He tamed his hair–somewhat wilder than usual in the humidity–and applied his aftershave. The distinct inputs, the components, came together. Sherlock Holmes looked back at him, coolly impassive, utterly composed, as highly styled as ever. Considering his reflection, he adjusted the fall of his jacket to present a certain line. Better. Not that it mattered, beyond what people saw. Clothes, however flattering, meant almost nothing. He regarded his reflection with some ego, yes, but without respect.

The effect was all he was after. The illusion. Yet another in the conjurer’s bag of many tricks.

John looked up as he stepped into the kitchen. From the parlor, he gestured to the pile of books, articles, tablets and laptops. “This is all yours?”

Around him, stacks of journals threatened to topple over. John looked from pile to pile of articles bearing a slew of familiar names and institutions: _Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics_ ; NASA; NOAA; NSF; _Nature_ ; Stanford Linear Accelerator.

Sherlock moved between him and _Notes from the Proceedings of the European Space Agency Conference_. “Stop snooping.”

“That’s rich.” John took a seat in his chair. “Newfound hobby?” He pointed his chin to a computer, which lay open to Slate’s _Bad Astronomy_ blog.

“Have you been talking to my brother?”

“Yeah, we meet every Tuesday for poker night,” John answered, flippant.

Sherlock slammed the laptop closed. “Research.”

Downstairs, the doorbell rang

John did his half-amused, half-skeptical, entirely-exasperated eyebrow thing. He pointed at the laptop as he rose to answer the door. “Pluto still counts. In case you were wondering.”

“The dog?”

“The planet.”

“It doesn’t.”

“It _does_.”

 

* * *

 

Bettina Mendelssohn was nervous.

“Dr. Mendelssohn.” Sherlock leaned back on the arms of his chair, considering the woman before him. “You are currently a senior conservationist with _Lenbachhaus Gallerie_ in Munich, yes?”

The tall, thin, severe woman nodded perfunctorily. She spoke with the heavy, clipped tones of a native German speaker unused to using her (very good) English. “That is correct. For more than seventeen years.”

“Last year, your museum was broken into. Several pieces were stolen.”

“Yes.”

“The police solved that case.”

“They did.”

He gestured absently with a hand. “Thieves were caught. Prosecuted. Sentenced.”

“Yes, Mr. Holmes,” Bettina Mendelssohn agreed.

“Forgive my friend,” John interrupted gently. “But what I think he’s getting at in his round-about way is—Why exactly are you are here, Dr. Mendelssohn?”

The woman nodded. “As Mr. Holmes implies, I have been with _die Lenbachhaus_ for many years. If you are unfamiliar,” she said, looking to John, “our collection is one of great modern and contemporary art–”

John coughed and caught his eye. “Yeah. Definitely know the difference between those two. Completely.”

Sherlock suppressed a grin.

Bettina Mendelssohn pressed on. “We are one of the city’s most treasured in the _Kunstareal_ , especially notable for Eastern European expressionist art of the last century. Among our permanent collection,” she explained, “is a large body of work by the painter Wassily Kandinsky.”

John opened his mouth to inquire.

“Late 19th, early 20th century Russian painter and academic,” Sherlock supplied. “Bauhaus instructor prior to World War II, also an influential art theorist and essayist thereafter. Subjects are typically abstract motifs of biomorphic and geometric expressionism.”

“Thanks.” John nodded. “Whatever that means,” he muttered.

Bettina Mendelssohn continued. “You see, we have many, _many_ pieces from his various periods. There is tremendous interest in his influences from the research community. We have as well many lesser-known artists who worked with him; colleagues, contemporaries, proteges.”

She paused, pursed her thin lips, wringing her hands slightly. “Our collection has grown a great deal over the years. So much so, that in in 2009, part of the museum was closed. The collections in this wing were dismantled and stored with other works in the museum collection while the building underwent expansion.”

“This is when the theft occurred. They came at night, between 02:43 and 03:09am. They were amateurs. I’m told two of the three have prior convictions for home burglaries. For one, a jewelry store.

“The works they took were several de Zweigers and a series of lesser works, one that was not attributed to any creator. It was acquired with a private collection after the war, along with many others from _Der Blaue Reiter_ group Kandinsky founded.”

Dr. Mendelssohn drew a shaky breath. “I do know know if you read of the, ah, drama that ensued after the theft—when authorities tracked down the thieves near Budapest, the wife of one thief panicked when she learned of the police involvement.” She clenched her fist in her lap. “She was afraid. So afraid, that some days later when authorities raided her home they found nothing out of the ordinary.”

John sensed the plot-twist. “But? They found something somewhere else, I take it.”

“Ja,” she scoffed. Bettina Mendelssohn’s implacable face pinched in bitter confirmation. “In the woods, behind her home.” Her voice grew to a slow, grim scratch. She swallowed heavily. “Ashes.”

“Ouch,” John sighed.

“There’s a sort of idiot’s elegance to it, though, don’t you think? No painting, no crime,” Sherlock pointed out.

“Go on,” John urged, shooting him a look.

“From the remains of the bonfire,” Dr. Mendelssohn continued, “Interpol was able to gather some fibres. Chips of paint. Things of this nature. They have all concluded that, yes—it was certainly the works which had been taken from our museum. This is confirmed. ”

Sherlock sighed, rising to his feet and pacing before the fireplace. What was the _point_ of it? “If the paintings have already been independently identified,” he said through his growing frustration, “then I don’t see what you expect me to do about it. There is no great mystery here, Dr. Mendelssohn.”

Bettina Mendelssohn locked eyes on him. “They are wrong, Mr. Holmes.”

“All of them?” John asked.

“Yes,” she said, turning to him. “Not about the paintings, but about whose paintings they were. The pieces were not simple minor works of _Der Blaue Reiter_ group, as my colleagues believe.”

“No?” Sherlock countered.

“Then whose are they?” John asked.

“Among them, at least one work by Kandinsky himself. Possible more. Unattributed, very likely from his teaching days, but there are themes similar to project created in his later years, as well, while in France and producing some of his finest work. These were found with a collection that belonged to a Parisian collector in the 16th. The property was seized by the Vichy, and held for many years. The records are incomplete, but I am certain these were his.”

Sherlock frowned. “Why are you bringing this to me?”

“I do not understand.”

“Why don’t the other curators share your position? Why is this not coming from the museum director? The head curator, even? Forgive me, Doctor, but I doubt you are here as a representative of the administration.”

Bettina Mendelssohn nodded. “I have made my case to them.”

“But…”

“I have wronged in my research, before. I have made it a,” she looked for the word “ _Teilzeit_?”

“Part-time,” Sherlock replied.

“–a part-time project of mine to identify many of the orphans in our collection.” She looks ill, aggrieved. “I made a very strong and, I regret, emotional argument against a colleague’s contradictory assertions in several years ago. He was correct. I was wrong. It damaged my reputation, my authority. Some of my staff, they agree with me. Others at the museum, in the community, they do not. For this I cannot blame them, Mr. Holmes.”

He shrugged. “So you believe a painting was stolen, and a painting was destroyed. Both those things have proven true. I’m not certain why, being a property of the museum, and insured, it matters if was one unknown work as opposed to another.”

“Bluntly put, Sherlock.” John threw him a glare, and before Bettina Mendelssohn could reply, offered a gentler version of Sherlock’s question: “What I want to know is, well...Forgive me, Dr. Mendelssohn, but how is this helpful? The museum will be compensated for the theft. The perpetrators have been captured. Even if this were proven, what else can you hope to regain?” John pushed, gently.

“My reputation, for one.” The woman’s eyes held his. “And I feel…”

Bettina Mendelssohn hesitated. Her eyes lifted to the ceiling as she searched for the words. Seeking some elusive answer, she looked around: to the experiments on the kitchen table, the wall of evidence from a previous case, to his violin. Her gaze fell to the books on his table. His open computer, where a Chrome tab displayed the homepage of the blog of Dr. John H. Watson, the record of two men, their friendship, and the adventures they had together. 

She looked to the side, shaking her head. For a moment, she said nothing, lost in thought.

John squinted, prompted with slight hesitation, “Dr. Mendelssohn?”

She came back to herself after a beat. Her cool clear eyes were without trace of sentiment or emotion.

“I think,” she said, considering her words with care. “That someone should know if a great thing has been lost.”  

 

* * *

 

“Let’s just walk. The Tube will be murder.”

“Walk?”

“Yes, the thing normal people do without superhuman abilities."

London crushed around him. Cars. Tourists. Students. Foreign faces. Native accents. Music poured out of the open windows of an ancient silver Peugeot. Gravel and whiskey, American. “-debts that no honest man could pay.”

He turned in the direction of the passing car. It was the second time he’d heard it as many days. Screams and sirens rang in his ears. Blood soaked trainers.

Reminds me of the kid.

“You alright?”

Music drowned out by the sound of jackhammers and urban detritus.

Sherlock turned back. “Fine.”

 

* * *

 

To live a Western, urban life in the 21st century was to live in constant proximity with construction. He’d been aware of it since he had come down, after Cambridge. Had been irked and inconvenienced by renovations and expansions and road closures and utility upgrades. It had always been there, he knew. Mostly government projects, smaller in scale; ugly council flat developments; Transport for London expansions. But London was always changing. It was not a city that existed in static form. It had never been.

The throngs of tourists had dissipated some, though construction obstructed pedestrian access along the northern pavement of High Holborn, crowding the opposite side. Streams of people flowed over obstacles and along objects. Cyclists jockeyed around traffic-bound cabs and Ubers. 

It was...different, now. 

He’d noticed it first in the weeks after he had returned from his two year absence, the rampant change. London, a carrion carcass always being fed on by the ravenous beast of capitalism, seemed to belong to a different echelon. It was not a city of students and urban poor and the aristocracy co-mingling and aligned against tourists, but one that belonged less and less to Britain. Littering the skyline were the rudely grand hulks of new skyscrapers, designed by starchitects and paid for by Saudi princes. At each turn was some new contention for the Pritzker Prize by OMD, Renzo Piano, Zaha Hadid.

More and more, he was left with a sense of how fleeting it all was. How pointless.

The brutal afternoon light caught the window of a Wandsworth bound bus, momentarily blinding him. “What is your legacy, John?” The question took him by surprise, spoken pre-consciously. On his tongue before the thought had registered in his mind.

“What?” John looked over.

He felt oddly hyperaware of his surroundings—Pigeons nested on an intersection of scaffolding. A school of cyclists jockeying around stagnant cabs. A murder of teenage girls laughed over their mobiles. He nearly backpedaled, feeling all at once a jolt of discomfort, uncertainty. But by the arch of John’s brow, he could not, and so posed the question a second time. “What do you consider to be your legacy?”

John set his shoulders, considered the question. He stuck his hands in his pocket. “Well, to start, I have an honorable record of service. Saved lives on the battlefield, fought for queen and country, etcetera. Still contribute to law and order from time to time.”

“Flout them, others–”

“Usually not my doing.” He flashed a grin, pressed on. “I do well by my patients, my practice. Try to do the same by my friends, by my wife, by Harry, when she’ll let me. The massive man-child genius I’ve fallen in with.”

Hilarious. “Try, indeed.”

“Shut up,” John barked, but in put-on way that wasn’t actually annoyed. “And of course, there is my literal genetic legacy in my daughter. In Julia.”

The sun beat down. Sherlock felt his palms were slick with perspiration, though his hands were cold. Anomalous. The traffic lights danced. Cabs crowded the arterial avenues and thoroughfares. No reprieve. No respite.

“And that is...sufficient to you?” he asked. “Evidence enough of a life well lived?”

“Yeah. It is. It’s more than most people get, I think. Why?” John looked at him, creased and confused. “Are you having a midlife crisis?”

He shot a derisive look. “Um, no.”

“How dare I presume.” John raised a brow.

Sherlock rolled his shirtsleeves back, folded his hands together and leaned on his knees. “Just...things.”

“Things?”

“Yes, things.”

“What kind?”

Sherlock sighed. “Jeremy Hyde is up for parole.”

“Who is Jeremy Hyde?”

“Who–?” He stopped in his tracks. “Do you ever listen to me, John?”

“It’s 50/50, to be honest. I’ve gotten good at the filtering.”

He ran a hand along his brow. How to explain?

* * *

In the shade of Barts courtyard, he dipped his hand into the old fountain. John sat at the edge, did the same. “Never let me suggest walking anywhere in this city in June again.”

“Noted.”

“So. Jeremy Hyde,” John ventured. “What’s he done? Robbed a bank? Stole some state secrets? Planned a coup?”

Hardly. His crime, for all it’s audacity, had been a triumph of human fallibility and pettiness, hastily planned and poorly executed. “You know from past cases, from conversations with my parents, from the meddling my brother persists in, that I’ve always been drawn to puzzles. Challenges. Mysteries.”

John shrugged. “No, not really.”

Sherlock. glared. Also smirked. Moving on. “As a child,” he explained. “I wasn’t much different. No one listened to me then, but as a teenager, I cultivated a little more authority. When I was seventeen, eighteen, I solved my first major crime. Jeremy Hyde.”

The humid, unmoving air was wet and heavy. He could smell smoke and burning plastics.

He began:

“In 1997, a run of increasingly poor business decisions rendered Jeremy Hyde—then a hungry, not-quite executive level manager of a boutique London investment firm as well as a functional alcoholic and prescription narcotic abuser—almost completely penniless within the spell of five and half volatile weeks on the NASDAQ.

“Hyde was in his early fifties. Married. Three children. His wife Elaine was younger, some fifteen years his junior; a trophy wife, you might say. She had no knowledge of their situation. Perhaps that was for the best, since in the weeks after his entire fortune evaporated, Mr. Hyde went to pains to avoid anyone finding out about his massive losses. Brokered illicit trades. Made hasty investments. He brought a few unknowing partners into his schemes serveral times but he was very clever, and very cautious. Always took care to cover his tracks.”

Eventually his employers began to sense something was amiss. One of my idiot schoolmates at Cambridge mentioned the circumstances. His firm was well known among wannabe-financiers, and underlings like Trevor delighted in the barest rumor of who’d be sacked next to carve out room for the next generation of ruthless investors. I was bored–desperately bored–and began looking into it. Took a couple months to suss out. Accounts can be hidden and credit bought, but stress? No, stress you can’t hide. And the more one is under, the more likely you are to make a mistake.”

He took a breath. “I was very close to finding a last piece of the financial puzzle, and prove Jeremy Hyde had been embezzling money, arranging off-the-books lending with clients of far less credibility than Fitzandrews & Loftus Partners were used to working with.”

_Lights flashed on the pavement._

“I found the shares. The tanking stock. The Cayman account. The liquidated properties and transfers into the dummy holdings. The dates, the balances. It was all there. The Met and his employers would eventually have caught him. I was faster, though. A catalyst to the reaction.”

_The wail of guitars. A shot. Screaming._

“What I did not anticipate was the shape that reaction would take. The panic. Or the extremes to which his narcissism truly reached. When he discovered the questions that had been asked, that his information had been hacked, all his breadcrumbs traced, Jeremy Hyde reached the only logical conclusion a sociopathic compulsive liar with an over-inflated sense of self-importance could make: He’d rather die than be punished for his crimes.”

John scoffed. “Dick. So he tried to kill himself?”

A muscle in his jaw twitched. In the shade of the courtyard, the sweat clinging to his skin had not evaporated. He felt oddly chilled for such a miserably oppressive day.

“Worse,” Sherlock answered. “He planned to die, yes. I realized that something was wrong when he failed to show up for a meeting with one of the agents he used for his regular offshore transactions. He never missed those meetings—they were crucial to keeping up his front.”

“He shot his wife first. In the head, and in front of their children.”

“Jesus!” John rubbed his mouth. “What happened? How did you–?”

“Know? I didn’t. Luck brought me to the Hyde’s home that afternoon. I figured I’d slip in, check his agenda—God,” he waxed fondly. “Electronic security was practically non-existent then.” He tapped his fingers together. “Instead I interrupted him.”

“My God,” John said with the disbelief of a good and unimaginative man.

Sherlock leaned back. “We fought. Police arrived. Hyde was arrested. He went to prison.”

“What about the family?”

He stood quickly. “Mrs. Hyde experienced severe brain damage. She was on a ventilator for several months following, eventually succumbing to her injuries. His three children survived, though, as you can imagine, none of them were particularly well-adjusted afterwards.”

“No. I wouldn’t imagine.”

“Nathan, Jessamyn, and...Melody? Melanie? Something. They lived. They lived to know the despot their father was. That he had lied to them, to their mother, every day for their entire existence. That they were disposable to him. Objects. Accessories.”

_Reminds me of the kid._

“None of them recovered from it. One committed suicide, another adopted their father’s habit for self-medication, eventually overdosed. One small mistake begat another, one bad deal compounded the next, and so on, all leading an otherwise insignificant egotist to murder.”

He faced the entranceway. The heat, the noise, the shriek of horns and reversing lorry alarms. And still he could not bring himself to go inside.

“So, John. When I ask you what is your legacy, I ask because I often wonder—What is mine?”

* * *

He left John to request a screen of the paint and ash samples Bettina Mendelssohn had left in their care. The Overground was stifling, though not presently crowded. The carriage banged on past Bethnel Green.

He was avoiding Barts. He knew this. More specifically, he was avoiding The Molly Problem.

It was an ambiguous and frustrating matter. He could not pinpoint the specific time or place in which Molly Hooper had begun to annoy him. They had been on equal footing for some years now—since she’d turned his own methods around and demonstrated her uncanny ability to see him with the precise clarity he’d never accomplished when he sought to deduce her. When he returned from his years dismantling Moriarty’s network, it was to a different Molly. Different, yet...good. The tragedy had gone out of her. The fretful hope, the breathless stammers. They had been collegial, friendly even. He asked more of her—her time, her assistance, her spare room. Well, her room. Sometimes. Rarely. Only when necessary.

He shoved his hands in his pockets, wrinkling his nose as he passed a group of sweaty twenty-somethings surrounded by a cloud of sweet and peaty hashish smoke. God, he hated the smell of patchouli. It reminded him of university halls; the Notting Hill fair; skunked flats in Camden; the squat where he’d crashed through endless heroin highs.

A memory struck him: her palm to his face. Again. Again.

Sherlock held his jaw tightly.

Irritable. _Irritable_. The only word for it. He despaired of being around her. The sound of her voice made his pulse quicken, requiring slow and steady breaths to calm. He did not know why. Molly was no different than she had been. Yet a tension had surfaced during each of their brief and stilted interactions in the months after the Incident—

_[ “‘Incident?’ Call a spade a relapse, Sherlock.”_

_“I had meant catching a bullet in the spleen, but, yes, thank you, Molly, it had been an entire week since you mentioned. Glad to know your recall is sharp as ever. Judging by the number of desiccated plants in your office and growing pile of unfolded laundry you pulled from that secondhand—Yes, secondhand. Don’t say vintage. It’s not vintage. Wines have a vintage. Wines, and I don’t know, coins. Clothes are old, or clothes are new. Admittedly difficult to tell with yours lately, since you’ve given even less consideration to them lately than you usually do from the state of creases on that very _old_ skirt. Might be time to cut back on the weekly girls night if it’s beginning to affect your recall.” ] _

—bleeding into every subsequent encounter across that summer and autumn. At each, Molly’s silence had built a wall of passive aggression and anger with each resounding click of slides in rooms they shared but did not acknowledge sharing; in conversations they held by rote; in glances they stole, glances they ignored. By Christmas, they had not spoken in weeks. And then…

And then.

By then he could not speak to her, not even if he wanted. He had not been able to say goodbye, but nor did he regret it. He had no desire to see disappointment and grief

_(again)_

in Molly Hooper’s overly large eyes, where he only ever saw the worst of himself. Telling her everything, in spite of all she deserved to know, in spite of the truth: that he would not ever see her again, would not demand body parts or ask her for her precise and dedicated assistance, would only bring her further pain. He had already delivered Molly more than her fair share. Shielding her from it, he felt, was a last kindness. Unequal and inferior to her own throughout the course of their acquaintance, yes, but he could do nothing more. And if it chafed him that ignorance was, in the end, the best he could do for bright, boundlessly optimistic Molly Hooper, well...

There had been little time to dwell on it. The full consequence of his actions

_(murderer)_

eclipsed everything else. The mission, and the cost.

The message had changed everything.

Mid February, dark and cold, after. A moment that should have come sooner. “I’m sorry. For everything,” he told her. His breath ghosted between them.

Molly had nodded, adjusting her bag on her shoulder. She clasped her hands, looked to the pavement. She was still and nonreactive. He became self-conscious in his apology, nervous, defensive. That he had said something wrong. Waited too long. Missed something.

And then Molly had shaken her head and looked up, meeting his eye for the first time since the day in the lab, eight months prior. She nodded, “I know.”

She had left without another word.

Days became weeks and months. Winter passed, colder and more grim than any in recent memory. Longer, too. So long that spring had hardly come before the hot spells began, and still she would not revisit the unfinished conversation. She did not address the matter. She did not inquire as to his well-being. She was pleasant. Professional to the point of clinical. Helpful, though not obliging. She was as succinct and superficial in her behavior as Molly Hooper could be. And from her refusal to offer a clear sign of forgiveness, a place where their companionship might resume, in each complacent nod of her head, in every dispassionate hum, his frustration grew.

He longed for nothing more than to return to a state of relative normalcy. To be the consulting detective once more, free to take cases, solve crimes, run experiments. John would not always be available to join him, that was given. But Molly he had counted on to remain her erstwhile eager self, providing body parts when he asked and stepping in when her schedule and his caseload required. Yet he’d found her presence increasingly difficult to endure.

 

* * *

 

He shoved through the glass doors of Gallery M, felt the cool rush of dry, dense, climate controlled air. “Where’s Raz?” he shouted. His voiced echoed in the cavernous space. 

A pale woman with short, dark hair, hard-cut bangs and very red lipstick held an industrial power drill atop a 16-foot ladder. Around her shoulder was a cord of 24-gauge galvanized steel wiring. “Not here,” Marta returned evenly, glancing down. "Which is what I told your boy Wiggsy when _he_ asked several hours ago." 

“Why?”

The drill whirred. “No idea.”

“He’s supposed to work here, isn’t it? Where is he?” he demanded.

“I dunno,” she snorted, drilling another hole.

“Marta!” he shouted.

She slammed her roll of hanging wire down, yelled over her shoulder. “Nik!”

“What?” A disembodied voice answered from a door off the gallery.

“Someone here for you.”

“He’s not answering his phone,” Sherlock explained, angrily..

A tall, wiry man in paint-flecked jeans and a faded t-shirt leaned his head out.

“Nikesh, why isn’t your employee answering his phone?” Sherlock said to him.

“Yeah? Imagine that,” Nikesh replied. “Probably why I fired him.”

“Tried to,” Marta corrected.

“Tried do,” Nikesh repeated.

“Useless,” Sherlock huffed again, looking between them.

“Sherlock, he’s not here!” Nikesh half-laughed. “I’m not lying to you, mate!”

He was about to object when someone shouted from the corner of the gallery space. “Oi! Nik? Come look—this alignment’s fucked.” Simultaneously, a dolly bearing a stack of what appeared to be black, geometric figures was wheeled from the far-entrance to the gallery. A frazzled-looking woman with dreadlocks called to Marta. “This one’s not labeled!”

Marta shot him a look, daring him to speak. “Gimme a tic—” she said to him, climbing down and helping dreadlock woman.

He spun on his heel, setting his hands on his hips. He drew long breaths through his nose, pacing the floor of the gallery.

A large black sculpture sat in the middle of the room. It spiraled up, soared, loomed, but occupied specific paths, angles, movement. A polyphony of shape, slightly altered, surrounding central points. A truncated tetrahedron, he saw. Each point touching another, each panel creating possible routes, paths. The figure reached and reeled, moved, shifted, was bent, bowed; was reared back, like a serpent prepared to strike.

It was also incomplete.

“What is this?” he asked.

“Fractal series on loan from New York. "The Morning Line", it’s called.”

Sherlock frowned. “Isn’t that a gambling thing?”

Marta reached for the top-most shape, searching for a serial number. “What? Oh, yeah. Takes it’s name from that betting mag. It’s about chance, probability. Journeys. ‘An infinitely recursive form, moving through space,’ the artist says. I say it’s fancy math shit, but okay. Looks cool. Probably looks better if you’re a bit stoned.” She grabbed for another panel, took the pair of them in her arms. “But that’s why Nik runs this show, and I just build it.” She dragged her panels into place while the assistant brought her power drill.

“You’re not very helpful.”

“You’re not very patient,” Marta countered. “And I have a show—Our last show!—opening in ten days, my brother was supposed to help set it up, flaked, and now I really don’t have time for your shit. Raz ain’t here. He’ll be back this weekend he said.

“I want to talk to Raz because I need to see Max.”

She groaned dramatically, leaning her head back. She cracked her neck. “Look, I’ll try to talk to my grandfather, but you’re better off waiting till you hear from Raz.” She pulled another panel from the heap, spun it around and over. “Someone’s life at stake here?”

“Oh, much more important than that, Marta,” he said, gravely. “Art.”

She hissed something under her breath.

“Tell him I came by.”

“I will, but, lemme ask—You got a stressed, demanding, Type-A older sibling?”

He hesitated. “Yeeeesss...”

“Yeah?” She replaced the bit on her drill, gave it a test whirl. A droning _WHIRRRRR_ echoed off the high-ceilings and artfully bare concrete walls of one of Hackney’s oldest art galleries. “Well think about this—How quick are you to return their messages?”

Marta gave him a final look, and returned to the strange sculpture and its infinite, impossible forms.

 

* * *

 


	3. Saturday

_**Saturday** _

Long slashes of radiant electromagnetic radiation had burned through the exosphere, slipping through his bedroom curtains with dedicated and malevolent purpose.

Sherlock Holmes blinked. Uncountable flashbulbing pinpricks scatterdanced like startled neutrinos behind his eyeslids. His mouth was dry. He blinked several more times, let his vision collect and settle. Ghost filaments, prominences, jets reared and broke, shattered. Particles collided, spiraled off to new outcomes, to new journeys.

He blinked again, now fully awake.

Fact: The Earth had traveled somewhere in the vicinity of 940 million kilometers along its orbital circumference within the local stellar accretion plane [average distance of 149.497 million kilometers; 152.10 at aphelion; 147.10, perihelion] at an approximate constant velocity of 67,000 mph since the day that John and Mary Watson were married.

A momentous occasion, considering the longevity of John Watson’s bachelorhood, Mary Morstan’s former occupation, and the birth of Julia Annabelle Watson, who filled her first months of life with more disaster and havoc than either an army medic and reformed assassin had previously encountered, apparently. Something impressive to be said for that, Sherlock supposed. (Possibly why he and Julia got along rather well.) Arbitrary as it was to mark the occasion by denoting its alignment relative to how far the planet had circumnavigated its elliptical path, tradition demanded, apparently, a party.

His phone vibrated on the bedside table. Raz had replied. Finally.

_sorry wuz outta town_

He texted back. _Need your help. Today._

_cant 2day_

_Why?_ Sherlock demanded.

_still outta town_

 

* * *

 

He made his way through the hot and humid streets of Central London, hoping a bit of lead-time in the company of the Watsons and his goddaughter would give him license to duck out before the cocktails took effect and people began chatting with dedication. Damp air assaulted from an Underground station. At Edgware Road a crowd of tourists laughed inanely at the human caricature shouting from the helm of a Big Bus Tour double decker. The heat of the day poured in through his shoes. He rolled up the sleeves. Aubergine might not have been the wisest choice for the height of summer.

The barometer was rising. His most interesting case at present involved a Ukraninan noneganarian’s input and some minor chemical analysis. The euro and sterling were down against the yen, the dollar was caught somewhere in the middle, and even Mycroft had slipped off into his lair once more and gone radio silent, indisposed by a herd of nationalist MPs championing a Brexit from the EU and making life indefinitely harder for traumatized, starving, middle-class workers who had the misfortune of being born on the wrong side of the Bosphorus and with skin richer in melanin than the average Anglo-Saxon.

He stood, waiting for a light. The teenage boy at his left tapped incessantly into his mobile. A bead of sweat pearled at his temple.

He was bored, which meant fixation. More than bored. The feeling had been building for sometime, pressing on his thoughts and invading his senses for weeks, months, maybe. He felt off. Out of step, as he had not felt his entire adult life. He spent hours staring at walls. He spent days looking for cases. He burned through an eight in the space of several days a few weeks prior, and when it was done, felt little of satisfaction he so often had. He frowned at the bright loudness surrounding him. A wiser move would have been to stay at home altogether.

Traffic grew lighter into the suburban streets west of Regents Parks. The Watson’s move to Maida Vale from Tufnell Park had been opportune. A fresh start, they’d claimed. That their three-bedroom also happened to be a short walk from Baker street was, he felt, Mary’s doing. She had the habit of sending John over to “check in” lately. The miasma of petrol and cigarettes and rubbish and piss and transfats had taken on a heavier quality in the heat wave, and the result was an ill-humour that darkened his shirt and mood alike. It shifted to the wet, vegetal damp of the canal, of barbecue smoke hanging on the air, and tiki torches burning insect-repellant scents, as he unlocked the door and bellowed his arrival.

John walked through the kitchen to the living room with a mixing bowl in his hands. He glared into the hallway. “Should I bother to ask where you got a key?”

“There are a great deal of things you needn't bother with, the spinach dip included.”

“How–?”

Sherlock bared his teeth dramatically, pointing, threw his jacket on a chair and stalked off in search of his goddaughter, whom he found gurgling in her nursery. He waved a wordless hello to Mary, folding napkins and onesies in the guest room opposite.

“Oh, Julia. You’ve rearranged,” he said, settling against the wall beside her crib. “Admirably baroque organization methodology you’ve chosen. First size, then color...Is this a material matrix? Naturals to polymer? Hmm. Keep ‘em guessing, I suppose.”

John’s voice audibly Doppler-shifted as he strolled down the hall: “Help, Sherlock.”

“Busy at the moment."

“You’ve time to be useful.”

“Julia and I have plenty to work on, thanks.”

John scoffed, mumbled something under his breath. He tapped down the stairs. Sherlock busied himself with various observational metrics of Julia’s physiological development for the next hour, recording them in his mobile spreadsheets. Once or twice John let out a huff of discouragement from kitchen that carried to the first floor.

The slim hope of a breeze sent the glittery infants mobile above Julia’s crib into motion, triggering the thin, drawn out notes of a nursery rhyme. _Ring around the rosey_ , the tinkling musical engine played. _We all fall down._

 

* * *

 

A tantalizing and deeply unsatisfying lick of breeze skirted through a now open window.

He frowned, seeing Julia had absconded. He must have nodded off.

The door opened. “Greg’s arrived.”

“Who?”

Mary stepped over his supine form, arching a brow. She retrieved Julia’s dummy. “Dead sexy copper type. Friends with my husband and provider of Sherlock Holmes’ suitable distractions since 2006?”

He rose on stiffened legs. “Occasional provider.”

“Let’s go.”

“Why is _he_ here?” Sherlock commented as they descended the stairs. He narrowed eyes at Mary’s former boyfriend. Declan. Dorian. Dustin. Still single. Still needy. Still _smiley_.

Mary turned over her shoulder, considering the jocular gathering. “John invited him. Hadn’t seen David in ages. He made a gesture.”

“Not a rude one I hope,” John interrupted, catching the end of their conversation.

“Inviting David,” Mary elaborated.

“Yeah. Well. Got the girl. Got the ring. No one likes a sore winner.” He proffered his contribution to the festivities: a bowl whose contents had the unsettling look of milk-drowned shrubbery. “Made this, by the way.”

“You cooked?” Mary asked, skeptical.

“I chopped. I mashed. I _pureed_.”

“Did you? Must be love.”

Sherlock felt his optic nerve twinge from the effort put into not rolling his eyes. John prodded. “Talk. To people. Pretend they’re clients,” he offered, heading off to greet a crowd of more Smilers.

Someone turned on an unbalanced speaker system. Music filtered in from the adjoining room. The singer lamented his confused, meaningless existence— _It’s all so very simple, and horribly complex_. A universal truth, though one not widely understood.

Sherlock ignored John’s prompting. “Your husband annoys me,” he said to Mary.

Mary took a bite of the lawn bowl. Spat it into her napkin, scowling. “Well, I married him, so at least you don’t have to endure his culinary adventures.”

A room away: “Heard that.”

Sherlock considered the green sludge. “Not anymore.”

“Heard _that_!”

“I’m getting a new blogger,” he growled. “One without–” He leaned against the counter flicked a hand around, taking in the room with all its shiny, happy domesticity. “– _accessories_.”

“Nah,” She swished a spatula between John’s retreating figure and himself as if it were a fair wand rather than a bit of polyethylene coated in propionic acids. “You’d have to talk to people to make that happen. Ones without puzzles, which you despise.”

True.

“Also–”

“He’s a decent enough shot–”

Mary tipped her shoulders side to side. “Ehh, elbow’s a bit drift-y. Sinks his shots low to the left. But sure. Decent _enough_.” She wiggled her fingers in the air, skipping on to her next point. “But also,” Her knowing gaze met his, assessing. “I know for a fact that love like yours never dies, Sherlock Holmes.”

A cool breeze rushed in from the open doors and windows, push-pulling the still air. On the back patio, golden-hour sun bloomed on pink stone. At their current latitude north of the equator, at early evening, in late June, the radiant light was already at its peak; it would dim through the evening. The shadows would grow with each summer day to come.

Fully formed, unprompted, the data points flashed.

_[Elaine Hyde; myocardial infarction, age 47; Nathan Hyde; suicide, age 19. Jessamyn Hyde; cocaine-induced heart attack; age 31.]_

He drummed his fingers. “Everything dies,” Sherlock replied quickly.

“Baby, that’s a fact,” came a lilting voice, as small and cheerful as its owner.

He examined the ratio of lipids to carbohydrates to sucroses spread across a serving tray. Monounsaturated fat and carb heavy; no drunks allowed at the Watson’s new digs. Giddy air, quick sashay, a kiss to Mary’s cheek. The long end of her ponytail swished against his arm where he’d settled against the counter. He felt his hair stand on end. His legs became twitchy. He shifted away from Molly, senses heightened, overcome.

“Hey, Sherlock,” said Molly Hooper, not looking at him.

He acknowledged her without turning. “Hello, Molly. How goes the marathon training?”

“Not bad! I’d ask if you wanted to join me sometime, but not your thing, is it?”

It was not. Molly knew that. It was also not _her_ thing, which made him strangely moodier. Her sudden interest in running—something he despised—was out of character. He disliked it, and dislike the fact that he had bothered to have an opinion at all. He said nothing.

Mary pressed a tray of snacks into Molly’s hands. She left the room to disperse them to the nice, noisy, nuisancesome partygoers. He glanced at her calves as she went. More pronounced gastrocnemius than in weeks previous. Slight chapping on the left heel; still wearing her Nikes, then. _Molly_. He’d told her the New Balance were more suited to her particular gait and heel—

A hand flashed before his eyes. “Houston to Sherlock?”

He blinked. Mary tipped her head.

Impervious facade best maintained. “What?” He leaned on his hand, lining carrot bits like bullet casings.

Mary smacked flour-laden palms on her apron. “Stepped away there a moment.”

“Mind palace.”

Brow arch. “Right.” She turned her attention to the counter once more, began arranging another plate of hor d'oeuvres. “Any visitors?” She lifted her eyes. That annoying, secret smile again. He left the room.

John stood by the stereo. He leaned against the wall.

“Oh, remembered what I meant to ask you,” John said as he attempted to sync his Galaxy S6 with a set of bluetooth speakers.

“Miraculous.”

“Like an iron vice.” John tapped the side of his head, bent to examine the electronics.

“Iron, certainly…”

John threw him an irritated glance before scowling at his screen. “I miss wires. At least you knew where those went, unlike this...whatever. Not sure how I feel about this _living in the future_ , business.”

“Beats the alternative.”

“Luddite’s devotion? 8-tracks and Betamax? Hell, give me a bloody gramophone, over—”

The speaker blasted a tone of interference.

“I meant not,” Sherlock clarified. “Living.”

“Ah.” _Button button button_. “You see the email from the web host?” John said, changing the subject.

“Yes.”

“Not that you care, I’ve backed-up the archive to my drive. Will do another to the _cloud_ thing. Whatever that means.”

Outside the sun threw low-energy waves at 7x10-7th power along the streets and lanes surrounding Regents Canal.

“John,” Sherlock huffed, staring at the lambent radiation. “If the technicians of one of the world’s premiere international data management firms imagine themselves to be vulnerable to a tetrawatt-strong flood of rogue electromagnetic particles, then–” He turned to John, glowered. “What good do you imagine your 250GB Western Digital external drive circa 2008 could _possibly_ do?”

“Just. A. Thought.”

“Desist.”

John scowled. “Be _have_ tonight or it’ll be Ke$ta and Taylor bloody Swift all evening and you’ll deserve it.”

“Ke$ha,” he corrected. Across the room, Molly was chatting with David Sorenson. She brightened at some comment, waved a syrupy “ _Hi hi hi_!” to Sally Donovan.

John’s lower jaw jutted outward. He scowled up, actually waving a finger. “I don’t care what her name is. How the hell do _you_ even know?”

“Music in the lab.”

"Oh, Molly said she had started on the paint samples, by the way." 

Across the room, Molly laughed at something. David grinned at her.

Sherlock scowled, checked his phone. 17:61.

He took a sip of his scotch, it was going to be a long night.

 

* * *

 

Photographs climbed their way up the wall. Frozen measures of a moment, captured for posterity. Reality, contrivance, it did not matter. People clung to artifacts of their existence as if their presence alone was proof.

 _J’adore_ eau de parfum. Dior. Unsubtle. Costly. Cloying. He sighed, glancing up to the ceiling.

“Thought I saw you skulking about. Still not one for socializing much, are ya?”

He smiled tightly.

Janine elbowed him playfully. “You can fake being charmed by me for a month, and not a room full of people for an hour or two? You do keep people guessing, don’t you, Sherlock Holmes.”

“Well, _half_ the time you were bearable.”

She considered him with a flippant smile. “Hard to believe you’re still single, isn't it?”

They exchanged the obliging smile of compatriots; those with a history of sorts, but an awkward one, requiring force to acknowledge, and a show of _fineness_ that was somehow necessary to demonstrate. He did regret the ruse, on some level. Not his best plan. Not his best.

Across the living room, Janine’s conventionally attractive McKinsey consultant companion whose chronic sleep apnea had interrupted her rest for the past several weeks gave a worried look in their direction. [ _Divorced (amicable); no children; obsessions for Australian rules rugby and Crossfit. Could do worse…_ ]

“Things good?” Janine asked with polite disinterest.

He tapped his fingers restlessly against the glass in his hand.

Within the week, a four generations-old staple of Southwark Pakistani grocers would be displaced to make way for a luxury condominium development. On his laptop, an article examining sulfite presence on the efficacy of adder venom had been half-finished for weeks. Stellar dynamics and particle physics and were really not his area. In two days Jeremy Hyde would appeal to the representatives of Her Majesty’s government for mercy.

“Fine,” lied Sherlock Holmes to a woman who had never known him to do anything else.

 

* * *

 

The sun had slipped beyond the horizon when she found him on the porch, contemplating a cigarette. The lambent, sinking glow threw red-pink seams on clouds of India ink. Tobacco and rice straw, laced with wood pulp. He rolled the bundle between his thumb and index finger. Even his vices held little interest these days.

He looked over at her, wary. “You’re not here to badger me about missing anything, are you?” Sherlock asked.

Molly raised her eyebrows. “Only Greg’s one-man version of ‘Every Rose Has It’s Thorn,’” she said with a slight wince. “Complete with air guitar. Not sure I’d say you’re missing much, there.”

“Every cowboy has a sad, sad song,” he mused.

Molly tilted her face up, brows at an angle. “Poison? Really?” Her nose scrunched as she looked pointedly at the center of his forehead. “That’s worth keeping on file in there?”

“Child of the eighties,” he admitted. “Also Mycroft hates anything written after 1895.” He leaned conspiratorially closer. “Let you in on secret?”

Expectant eyebrow quirk.

“He really hates hip-hop.”

“Sherlock Holmes,” Molly said. A slow smile lifted from the corners of her mouth, like the lifting of a shade that had been closed. “I refuse to believe you have a secret love of Run DMC.”

“More a religious devotion to annoying my brother, but,” he sighed, turning a long-suffering gaze to the merciless heavens. “We must all make sacrifices to our calling.”

She shook her head, then glanced in the direction of the house, the partygoers. “Bored?”

He leaned his head in hand. Inside, Mary was laughing at something brightly. People clustered, chatting inane observations about meaningless whatever. Inebriation encouraged volume, affection, flirtation. Music filtered through the kitchen onto the small patio. “Just...people,” Sherlock offered. Why bother to explain.

Molly fanned herself with a napkin. “Just needed some air. Won’t pester you for long.”

“I didn’t mean you.” He turned his attention to the herbaceous border. He should look into poisonous plants. Surely some grew in London.

“I’m not ‘people’?” She sounded amused, which was a change from her constant detachment. “How nice.”

“Well, obviously you are, but you’re mine.”

A cabbie turned the corner hard at the end of the street, tires squealing. Laughter spilled over from the party into a silence that had suddenly dropped out between them. Immediately, the music echoed through the awkward atmosphere. Self-consciousness struck like an undeflected blow to the head. The words had slipped out. He faltered. “That’s not–”

“I know what you meant,” Molly said quietly. The smile in her voice bloomed on her mouth. She hesitated, then took a sip of her drink. “But you shouldn’t feel compelled to fill the silence, Sherlock. Conversation really isn’t your area.”

She looked up. He looked down. The tightness, the tension that had pulled between them too long, like a wire tensing to fray, slipped a little, giving way. Pressure redistributed. His lungs filled. Physiological response. “Why are you here?”

Fairy lights twinkled. Her hair was drawn up in a loose, voluminous twist. She’d pinned it up in the heat, maybe. “ _Strictly Come Dancing_ was a rerun,” Molly joked.

“No, I mean–” The ice in his glass had melted. He did not mean tonight. He did not mean anything to do with her blue flowered dress and brown brogues, or the long hair she had wound upon her head. It was easy to see why a person as lovely and kind and sweet as Molly Hooper would be at a party for her friends. It was the most normal thing in the world for a Molly Hooper to do.

He meant–

_He meant–_

What he meant was–

She offered a little shrug. “I get bored, too, you know,” she said, not looking at him.

He considered this. She did not mean bored. Not precisely. Molly meant a quality of boredom, a dissatisfaction with her present. It was the reason she had so many friends. Why she dated idiots and had insipid conversations with men like David Sorenson. Molly was content, though not fulfilled. Molly wanted _moreness_ of her life.

“Especially since this Consulting Detective I know stopped hanging around my lab.”

So, the conversation, then. “You–” Sweat prickled his brow. He held his focus on the plants. _Brunnera macrophylla. Artemesia. Agapanthus africanus._ “Had not forgiven me. I took that to mean you had little desire to see me unless absolutely necessary.” 

She looked up at him, confused. “Why would _I_ need to forgive you?”

 _Valeriana phu. Huechera villosa. Hosta sieboldana._ “Drugs. Lying. I...behaved poorly.”

“Oh.” Molly was gripping the railing so hard, her knuckles were white. “I didn’t realize—Sherlock, you apologized. I knew you meant it. That was good enough for me.” She looked at him afflicted. “Have you been waiting on me? Is that why you don’t come round anymore?”

He felt ridiculous. He turned to lean against the porch rail, folded his arms across his chest. She was not lying, that was obvious. She truly had not known. He reviewed their interactions in a new light, seeing them from her perspective. Detailed, obliging, professional. Precisely what he wanted from a lab assistant. What he used to want, rather.

She swallowed. Her face fell half in shadow, was half made rose-pink and gold in the fading light.

Inside the clatter and cheer of the party went on. Molly stood at his arm.

“I wondered why you were so distant. These past months, I mean,” she said. “It’s nice having you here with everyone, for a change.” She turned her head up, looked to the sky.

He followed her gaze up to the vaulting whitebluevioletpink sky. Swiss Air contrail. Alpha Cygni [ _Latin; swan_ ] was had emerged at one glimmering vertex of the Summer Triangle. Several major characters in classical mythology were purported to have taken on the form of a swan. Tragic young men. Great heroes. The king of the gods. A superlative disguise, he imagined.

“People do not _change_ , Molly,” said Sherlock Holmes. Better to dispel her of any generous thoughts. “Least of all me.”

Molly scoffed. It was so rare and strange a sound that he turned quickly to make sure she was directing it at him. “Untrue!” she replied, a wry grin at her mouth. “And illogical, your cardinal sin.”

He frowned. “I don’t follow.”

“Look where you are.” She gestured in the air with her sweating tumbler, looking around. Seltzer and lime. Three ice cubes. Splash of pomegranate. Work in the morning, then. “When I first met you," Molly continued. "You never socialized. Refused meals, turned down coffee invites, never joined Greg for a pint whichever detective you’d just helped to close a case. You never did any of that. Years-Ago Sherlock would have considered a night like this a ‘pointless waste of time,’” she said, mimicking him.

“I don’t sound like that,” he said, pointing a finger at her, “and I _still_ consider it a pointless waste of time.”

“And yet,” Molly replied, her palm turning up at the truth self-evident, her mouth turning up in subtle victory. “Here you are. At a party. With people.” _And asking my forgiveness_ , she did not say with words, but he knew she was thinking it from the expression.

Rather a difficult point to argue. A long moment stretched out. “Technically the party is over there, which I am not. I’m party adjacent.”

“Nice try.”

He sighed dramatically, looking down, conceding defeat. “You may have a point.”

She pushed on. “I know how you see yourself, Sherlock, and I know what you consider yourself to be. But you’re wrong. You assume that personality is a set of traits and behaviors. A thing you’re stuck with, always. But people do change. They grow in ways they can’t anticipate. Ways no one can. And not knowing which way you’re going certainly does not mean that you won’t go anywhere at all.”

“That’s more than you’ve spoken to me in several months,” he commented.

She studied his restless fingers, head tipped slightly away. The freckles on her throat glittered with a faint perspiration. “Thank you,” Molly said, softly. “For apologizing. You didn’t have to.”

“No. I did.”

“Okay.” She dipped a shoulder, smoothing the line of her blue patterned dress, as dark as the esky was becoming, busying her hands to hide her nerves. “You weren’t–I mean, it wasn’t me you hurt.” Her turn to awkwardly consider the garden.

 _At last. Molly Hooper tells a lie._ An untruth, at the very least. “Yes. I did,” Sherlock replied. “You may not have required an apology from me, Molly Hooper. But you deserved one.”

Molly looked up once more. They considered each other through a new atmosphere. The air had been cleared, so to speak. Rarified. It was not precisely comfortable yet, the silence that settled, but it could be lived with. For a few minutes, they simply stood together in their quiet contemplation, as the long, dusky summer light shifted fully into shadow. It felt as though they were at work in the lab, each considering their own task, their own questions. Which, he supposed, they were. He looked to Molly, her eyes low, unfocused. The tension was not gone, he realized, though it had been altered. For the moment, however, neither of them, it seemed, were yet willing to break it.

 

* * *

 

From the speakers, the mix of three-chord rock ballads dropped out. The song changed. Molly turned over her shoulder. “Oh. I love this song.”

A strummy, zappy, _buh-boom-boom_ beat spun out of the speakers, croony and FX-laden. It was weird, sweet. Saccharine, even. Oddly catchy.

_Her name is Yoshimi. She’s a blackbelt in karate._

Setting his drink down, taking hers aside, he held out a hand.

Skeptical, surprised, her nose wrinkled as Molly scoffed a wry, “You dance?”

“I dance.”

She stepped forward, slipping into his space. The height differential was such that he needed to look almost straight down, she, straight up. “You didn’t dance with me at John and Mary’s wedding.”

Her fingers tilled the fabric of his Zegna dress shirt. He had not thought the fabric was as thin as it seemed under her palm, and yet he felt each crescent of nail against his shoulder, felt the slim length of each deft little finger in its press. “You already had a partner,” Sherlock replied.

_She knows that it’d be tragic–_

Molly frowned. “My boyfriends don’t get to determine who I interact with.”

_–if those evil robots win._

“He wasn’t your boyfriend.”

She pursed her lips. “That isn’t the point.”

_Oh Yoshimi, they don’t believe me._

She was not a perfect dancer, but she followed his lead easily and without explanation. He did not need to waste words on her; she read and spoke his private language with near fluency. Even now. Even still.

The blue flower dress exposed her back above the lumbar curve. He traced the edge of the fabric with his thumb, skirting the ridge of ribbon, the tight industrial stitching, occasionally finding skin. Warm. Damp. Soft.

 

_But you won’t let those robots defeat me._

Molly blinked, looking up. Her eyes, the brown of tilled earth, caught the yellow light of faux-vintage Edison bulbs strung along the patio. Small suns in parallel universes. They moved in circles, around and around, drifting in time, though held fast.

Molly gasped, looking up. Above them, the shifting technicolor veils of the aurora shimmered. "Wow! I've never see an aurora," Molly whispered in hush.

"Beautiful," he said.

The sound effects growled, slowed, gradually spun out. The drum machine beat to a close. A breeze stirred the tendrils of hair that had slipped from her messy bun in the growing humidity. She dropped her hands from his waist. He let go of her in response, though neither stepped away. His fingers brushed hers as their hands fell. A hard, bright frission of energy bolted along his thoracic vertebra. In her eyes he found an expression he could not name. Worry met by fear and something akin to—

The clattering of cutlery on glass shattered the uncertain moment. An unfamiliar voice sang out: “A toast!”

Molly’s head turned to the door. “Guess we should go in.”

“Guess so.”

Twilight had moved to full night. He followed her back into the too-brightness of the Watson’s house. Molly moved through the kitchen, snatching a bottled water. She settled herself across the room at Sally Donovan’s side, looking flushed. The heat of the day had lingered. He felt it himself.

“Just in case you’re wondering, it’s a good look, that.” He looked down. Mary handed him a champagne flute as John was cajoled into giving an impromptu speech. She quirked an eyebrow, pleased with herself.

“What?”

“You.” Mary deliberately looked away, the suggestive smugness in her voice, a ghost of a smile tippling across her lips. “ _Accessorizing_.”

 

* * *

 

Molly huffed a little at the effort of opening the outer door. The lock always stuck. “I’ll have to move soon.” She slid in as he pushed the door open, held it for her. Sherlock frowned. “Why would you move?”

In the stairwell, she half turned around a bannister, climbing to the first floor. “Rent’s increased. Property was sold a few weeks ago. Surprised it didn’t happen sooner, actually. Neighborhood’s gotten so boujy in the last few years. Gentrification, ya know? Suppose it was inevitable.” She looked down, smiled to herself as she slipped the key into her apartment lock. A memory, perhaps. “My dad helped me move in, gosh, ten, eleven years ago? Long time, anyway.”

"Plus..." she trailed, pointing to the door opposite hers. Behind it, an aspirational musician _clanged_ at G, C, Am chords.

The air in her flat was cooler, though musty. She tossed her purse aside, toeing off her shoes by the door, where a line of sneakers and work-appropriate flats sat neatly against the floorboard. She pet Toby on the head before moving to throw open the window. “It’s alright, though. Not a big fan of all the weird cereal bars and posh upcycle-y shops that keep cropping up. Been thinking about making a change, anyway.”

The streetlight flickered, once, twice, throwing much of her face into silhouette, and for a moment she was a shapeless shadow.

The music from Molly's neighbor suddenly came into its own. He heard the song for what it was with an unpleasant shock.

_Debts that no honest man can pay._

Molly's turned. The face of Elaine Hyde looked back at him.

He flinched, stepping back quickly, stumbling against the couch. Her cat jumped up and made off for the bedroom.

Molly gave him a queer look. “Are you alright?”

“What?”

“You seemed tense, earlier. On edge.”

“On edge,” he repeated, dubious.

“Bothered,” Molly clarified. “By something. Maybe a case or, I dunno, the weather, or something like that. But every time I see you lately, you seem like your distracted or annoyed.”

“I’m fine,” he bit out. “I'll see you at Barts.”

He was a step outside her door, two down when she caught his wrist. “I’m always here, you know. If you need anything.”

She stepped down one stair. It brought her face level with him. He could see concern written plainly in her face. She leaned in, pressing her lips to his skin. He could smell the scent from her body creme. LUSH Dream Cream; lavender and chamomile. He could sense the vital heat of her, radiating. Shining. A lock of hair that had escaped its bindings brushed against his throat as she pulled away. His heart thundered, skin prickled, hairs stood on end.

“Good night, Sherlock,” she said.

He stood in the landing of the apartment building long after he heard Molly’s door fall shut. He walked home and fell asleep well after midnight.

Restless. Tense.

And, despite their productive conversation, still deeply, irrepressibly _irritated_.

 

* * *

 


	4. Sunday

_**Sunday** _

He was leaning up against the door outside the back door entrance to Gallery M and the workshop when Raz finally showed up, coffee in hand and cigarette hanging from his mouth.

"Where've you been?" Sherlock demanded.

"Newcastle,” Raz replied, holding up a hand as if to say _Shhhhhhhhh._ He pulled out a key and unlocked the large, metal door.

"Newcastle?!” Sherlock replied, indignant, following him inside.

"Yeah. Newcastle,” Raz repeated.

“The hell are you doing in Newcastle?”

“Didn’t Marts tell you?” he drawled around his cigarette. He

A realization dawned on him. Sherlock shook his head. “Hell.”

Raz made a clicking sound, "Yup. Closing up everything first of next month. Gallery, workshop, everythin’. Think it’s becoming condos.”

“Great!” he grit out. “Splendid. So much for specialists.”

“What is a condo exactly?” Raz speculated.

Sherlock ignored him. “What about your grandfather?”

“Howzit different from a flat? You pay someone else to take care of some stuff? Like, I dunno, plumbing what all?”

“Raz,” Sherlock growled. “He is coming, right?”

“Yes, though I’m warning you—he’s gettin’ worse. Part of why Marts wants to leave. Wants out to suburban life. London’s too expensive. It’s too hard to take care of him, on top of everything else. Plus,” he The Alzheimer’s gotten much worse.”

While they waited, he pulled up the file on his resident Fine Arts expert. For much of his post-war career, Max Razvanovitch had been a commercially successful and traditionally accomplished painter-turned-UCL art historian. In the course of his nine plus decades, he’d studied in the Dessau, Moscow Academy of Fine Arts, with Picasso after the Spanish Civil War, in New York and San Francisco. He’d married several times, had something like eleven children by several mothers, many of whom had been raised together in an avant-garde demi-commune in North London. Raz had learned a number of skills and techniques at his side while cultivating his own techniques on the blacktop, bombed-out canvases of the East End.

Now he was an old man, ravaged by every year added on to his already prosperous life.

It was a terrible to see someone lost to their own mind. He thought of the blog. He thought of a great many things.

"Don't see why you want to drag him out of London. He's an artist, not a horse."

"He's old. Like, really, really old. Marts and Dimitri want him around their kids and stuff. They want me because I usually get through to him best—though that's happening less and less lately. Also, I'm too poor to afford London outside these digs. Whatchoo want?"

“I _want_ a freelancer, but I’m out one, now. As well as a classically trained Eastern European modernist."

“I’m _still_ freelance!” Raz countered. 

"Well, I want one local!" Sherlock returned, somewhat childishly.

“Look, told I told you—I’d bring the old man into the shop for a few hours. See? Fulfilling my duties. Useful.”

“You’re annoying.”

Raz laughed. “Yeah? My sister says that. Betcha bruv says the same about you.”

The door shuddered. The formidable face of Marta Razvanovitch emerged from the glare. Holding fast to her arm was a very small man with bright white tufts of hair, large spectacles and disheveled trousers with a muddy gray t-shirt flecked with paint. Around his shoulders was a careworn cardigan. He looked sharp-eyed and purposeful. Read to begin.

" _Dedushka_ ,” Raz said, gently. "Grandpa," he said. “Sherlock Holmes is here. The detective. Do you remember?”

“I know him,” Max Razvanovitch replied, sternly. “I’ve worked with him for years.” Over his large, owlish glasses be blinked critically. “Who are you?”

“Yeah,” Raz said. He leaned back slowly. Marta gave him a look, soft, kind, tired. “C’mon, Mr. R. Sherlock Holmes has some questions for you.”

Raz settled his grandfather into a comfortable chair by a large plate glass window. An easel with a brightly colored canvas of a geometric figures, vectors in motion, X and Y axes of varying shades and scales collided across the surface.

Sherlock laid out a series of paints, asked about his preferences, his applications, his techniques. Gradually, he pushed Max Razvanovitch to expand upon his background. What he knew of his friends, colleagues, rivals. Instructors, even.

“Saltier, he refused anything with chalk base. ‘Insubstantial,’ he called it. ‘Fleeting, and fleeting more till,’ was his line. Ha!” Max barked out a long, watery laugh. “Pretentious cock.”

Marta handed her grandfather a cup of tepid tea, placed a cup of water at his arm. “Grandad, do you remember working with an instructor called Kandinsky?”

Max Razvanovitch slapped his knee. “Wassily!? Oh, I did like him. Brainy. Brilliant. Bit of an ego, but we all had egos. Convinced we were changing the world, or saving it for art, or love, or from the capitalist pigs.”

Raz and Marta shared a bemused, awkward look. “Indeed,” Marta quipped, raising a brow. “I ask because Mr. Holmes here has a question about one of the paintings that Kandinsky might have made while you were both at Bauhaus?.”

“Oh?”

Sherlock held out a tablet: a digitized image of the work Bettina Mendelssohn had sent. “Does this look familiar to you, Professor?”

Max Razvanovitch accepted the device with wizened, shaking hands.

His head cocked to the side as he rotated the tablet. All at once, he drew back. He traced the lines and movements across the screen. “I know this.”

“Yeah?” Raz prompted. “Can you tell us about it?”

Max adjusted his glasses, looked over them to glare. “Hmph. You’re like my grandson. Pushy, pushy.”

Marta and Raz exchanged another look. She smiled demonstrably wider, though he could not say for certain if her look was happy or not.

“You’re certain you know this work?

“I do, yes.” Max Razvanovitch nodded. In that moment, it was easy to see his relation to his granddaughter. His expression was bright, joyous, but aggrieved, too. His fingers tightened their grip. “Yes, I remember.”

 

* * *

 

Before he left, Sherlock studied the the sinuous, twisting, tangential black shapes wracked and roiled across the room. A frozen moment of reality, where intersections and decision-point were trapped and mapped, a universe of the possible, mappable, moving through scales. It was hugely holographic, and molecular. It seemed to exist at multiple levels at once. A cosmology and its component parts. Infinite even as it was self-contained.

London, rising; racing to ruin.

Long after he left Hackney, the twisting, tumbling figure lingered in his thoughts, spiral out from instance after instance, from moment to moment, chance to chance.

 

* * *

 

  


 

 

The halls were quiet at Barts, broken only by the distant, whining hum of the centrifuge in the next lab. He leaned back, cracked his neck. He both desperately wanted a cigarette and couldn’t be bothered to leave the cool confines of the lab.Beside him on the counter, the stopwatch on his phone ticked down.

“Hi!” Molly offered, stepping through the door. She wore blue scrubs and a pair of lab goggles on her head. The hairs of his arm stood on end. He grit his teeth. Hadn’t this been _sorted?_

On the opposite counter, she checked a cabinet and then made a note in her lab book. Labeled a sample. Set her pen aside. “What are you working on?”

“Case.” He turned off the microscope. “When are you starting?” he said, more acidly than he meant.

Molly balked. “What?”

“The change you want to make. You mentioned last night. You’ve a new job, Molly,” he accused.

She did not rise to the challenge. “Did Mike tell you, or did the position of a piece of lint on lab coat give it away?”

“There’s a suit in your office.” He’d seen it coming in. “Dry cleaned two days ago. A size too big. Style is somewhat out of date owing to its purchase at least six years ago. You rarely wear it unless you are attending something terribly professional. Such as a job interview. Wasn’t a stretch. ”

“Ah.” She shrugged. “It’s tomorrow, actually. Going up to talk about a research position. I’m _leaning in_ , and all.”

“I don’t understand the reference.”

“Book by the CEO of one of those tech companies. How-to thing for women in the workplace?”

He looked her askance. “You do not work for a tech company. You do not work in a field at the mercy of market-driven economics at all.”

“Debatable,” she replied. “But I _would_ like to learn a thing about female success in a field largely dominated by men, so I don’t think it’s terribly off-base.”

“I see,” he returned.

Molly turned back to her lab bench. “Just exploring options, Sherlock. Would be terribly illogical— _sentimental_ , even—not to, wouldn’t it?”

He recognized by her tone she was teasing, but found he was uninterested in responding. He focused on the samples.

As they worked, Molly streamed BBC News quietly from her phone.

_“...In science news tonight, BBC contributor Nella Sadler speaks with Professor Brian Cox about the brilliant northern lights that that have been visible across the UK this week._

_NELLA: Thanks for joining me, Professor._

_BRIAN: My pleasure._

_NELLA: So, Britons, and in fact folks across Northern Europe, Russia, Canada, event parts of the US, are seeing the northern lights, or the aurora borealis, with startling frequency these days._

_BRIAN: And it’s the southern hemisphere as well, though due to the relative low distribution—something like 70% of mass above sea-level is north of the equator—there’s comparatively less settlement. So, far more ocean, far more unseen swathes of sky. But it’s happening there as well. Don’t forget, in a northern summer, the earth’s axis actually tips away from the sun, so we’re not even bearing the whole brunt of this thing._

_NELLA: Yeah, this “thing.” What’s going on?_

A memory from an old case surfaced. _“I thought you didn’t care about—”_

_“Doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate.”_

He returned his focus to the work.

_BRIAN: –solar storm. Think huge clouds of charged particles hurled out from the outer layers of the stellar atmosphere. When these particles run up against our own magnetosphere and outer atmosphere, they sort of scatter._

_Charged particles striking the upper layers of the atmosphere cause electrons to move to a high-energy state. When they return to their regular, lower-energy state again, they lose a photon in the process. This creates the beautiful, colorful skies of the aurora._

“Weird,” Molly replied. “But lovely.”

He started. “What?”

She switched out the slide under her microscope. “The aurora. We saw it last night.”

He swallowed. "Of course."

_NELLA: But there are possible negative effects to this as well, right?_

_BRIAN: Yes, there are. These sort of solar storms happen on a regular cycle, but this one in particular is of a scale we’ve never experienced before. We’re watching closely to see what it might do._

_NELLA: Could communications really end up being damaged? Broadcast, the Internet, that sort of thing?_

_BRIAN: Yeah, all that’s possible. To date, we’ve seen a couple satellites affected. One of the ESA solar orbiters has been offline for the past week. We think it’s gone into a kind of safe-mode. But there are something like 1,500 functioning satellites above the earth at any given time. So honestly, we’re not seeing a significant–_

“Odd thinking about such rare, tiny things having such massive effects, isn’t it?” Molly comment idly.

“Hardly rare,” he replied. “Even in our relatively backwater stellar neck of the woods, neutrinos frequently collide with charged particles: Electrons. Bosons. Muons. Interplanetary space is far denser than the relatively bare interstellar space. _That's_ where instances of event interaction are, in fact, rare.”

She turned her head. The edge of her mouth ticked. “You mean to say that it happens–”

“Molly, don’t.”

“ _–once in a blue muon._ ”

He sighed. Looked at her. Felt his mouth tip up involuntarily when met by her irksome, impish smile. “Puns are childish.”

Molly ignored him. “False, oh enlightened one. Puns are a delight. And historically regarded as a sign of superior cleverness, premier intellectual worth, the _smartest of smarts_.”

"Those all mean the same thing.”

“Woulda thought that’d be up your alley. All those layers of clever, hidden meaning. And everywhere, and for ages. Even Shakespeare is full of barely disguised dirty jokes, innit?” She looked at him suddenly uncertain. “Have you _read_ Shakespeare?”

“Idiot Italian teenagers? Nope, thanks.” He answered, flat. Though, he admitted after a beat. “ _Tempest_ was fine. And _Twelfth Night_.”

She rolled her eyes. “You would go in for the disguise-y one.”

 

* * *

 

Molly stepped away sometime later. Autopsy. “Chronically ill 83-year-old-male. Suspected natural causes,” she sang out before he could inquire. So less than thrilling.

He sat in silence, lulled by the faint _ding_ of a centrifuge completing its cycle rang in the cool and sterile room. The toggling _tock_ of the microscope shutting down its precise cylinder of light, withdrawing the radiant glow from the matte black of the lab bench. The hush of the air units.

His phone _beeped_. Timer had run down.

Pigment particles will lacked iron, chromium, or cadmium ruling out yellow ochre, cadmium yellow, and chrome yellow. High refractive index and the anisotropic particles with high birefringence, distinguishing the pigment from many other yellows including yellow ochre, gamboges, lead-tin yellow, and Naples yellow. Monoazo pigments, characterized by the fact that the molecules contain one (mono) “azo” group—a double bonded nitrogen group bound to aromatic or heterocyclic rings on each side of the nitrogen group. All concurrent and indicative of a series of artist’s paints first used in the early 20th century. And, according to Max, Monsieur Kandinsky’s favorite brand.

Arylamide aka Hansa yellow 10.

So. The paint samples matched. He sat on the counter, bounced the squash ball against the floor.

Given Max Razvanovitch’s testimonial ID of _Composition 116_ , background and career, and the assurance the three other living contemporaries from the Dessau and Bauhaus would assert the same, he concluded Bettina Mendehlsson’s findings were correct. The paintings were assuredly lost Kandinsky pieces.

On any other day he’d have ducked out for a cigarette. The craving was there, in a manner of speaking, but he felt no compulsion to fulfill it. It was like a phantom limb, connected to old wants and desires by a neural network no longer fully in place.

“Worked it out, then?” Molly called out. He looked up, realizing how much time had gone by. It was at least an hour later. Maybe two. 

“Yes.”

“And?”

“These plus Max Razvanovitch’s affidavit, we can rest assured a priceless piece of art has been lost forever,” he said. Only a trace of sarcastic irony leaked into his tone.

Molly recoiled. “Oh! That’s terrible.”

She was visibly crushed. Why? In her blood and in her lungs, cellular respiration continued unabated. Human animals struggled with the confluence of base desire and higher reasoning. Particles moved in accordance with the mathematical articulations of Maxwell, Farday, Lorentz, Ohm. Shops closed. People moved. Day by day, another steel-glass superstructure shed it’s flimsy chrysalis, imposing itself on the world.

The world, such as it was, moved on, unaffected and unmoved by her. Or by him.

“No one knew it existed in the first place. It will not be missed,” Sherlock said.

Molly’s mouth opened in further horror. She closed it quickly, her mouth pressed into a thin, white line. “But. That’s even _worse_ ,” she managed.

“How do you mean?” Sherlock tipped his head up. He screwed his face up at her, confused. “It had been improperly catalogued, labeled and forgotten for the better half of a century in some half-rotted German warehouse for years. It won’t be missed,” he defended.

“That might be true. But–” She paused. She twiddled her lips, searching for the words. “It’s not just a painting though, is it? Someone poured their whole self into that. Their-their dreams or their fears and desires. Agony and madness and their beautiful, totally unique perspective.” She shook her head. “And it’s all _gone_. Imagine your favorite song. What would it be like going through life never having heard it? What if you never had the chance to learn music, or science, or meet the person who changed your whole life?”

He pointed out: “ _We_ know. We have the facts. The science that corroborates them.”

Molly looked away. Back to her microscope.

“Sure. But Sherlock…” She sighed, look up at him once more before ducking her head and returning to her task, resigned. “ _Knowing_ that a thing is real is hardly the same as experiencing it yourself.”

He was about to reply when he realized that Molly had replaced the BBC with Spotify.

 _“I got debts no honest man can pay,_ ” Bruce Springsteen reminded him.

In a burst of aggression, he shoved a line of drying Pyrex into the industrial sink. “Why is this SONG everywhere?!” he shouted to Bruce, to Molly, to no one. 

He closed his eyes, drew a long breath. Turned to Molly. “What?"

Molly raised a brow, looked to the sink full of upended beakers and graduated cylinders.

“I’m fine.”

Molly looked at him askance. Her lips pursed. She asked no more questions, but pointed out, "Mike needs the lab in the morning. Summer term students. I’ll put your samples in the fourth floor lab for tomorrow.

“Won’t be in tomorrow. Have a thing.”

“Thing?” Molly repeated.

“Court. Case. Old.” Outside, the shadow of a crane tilted across the pavement, blocking out the sun. “Jeremy Hyde is up for parole this week.”

“You put him away, right? Ages ago.”

How did she know? “Yes.”

“What did he do?”

“Fraud. Murder. Attempted murder. Wife. Children.”

_Reminds me of that kid._

A lock of Molly’s hair had slipped loose of her braid. It curled below her left ear, winding around itself like a double helix. “When?”

“1997.”

Her eyes widened. “You were just a kid.”

He bit out sharply. “I was 17.”

Molly flinched. “I just meant—When _I_ was 17, I was playing football and worrying about A-levels. Not catching criminals. Nothing important.”

Molly had turned off Spotify after his outburst. For a long time, the only sound was the soft click of slides, the rustle of pen on paper, the clinking of glassware in the autoclave.

He continued to draw long breaths, staring at nothing, his mind full of information. Circuity as influenced by waves of electromagnetism. The rate of recidivism amongst violent criminals. The current market rate value of a high street gallery in Hackney.

"Do you know the story?" Molly interrupted.

"What story?"

“About Barts."

"It's a hospital, what more is there to know? Lucky one's leave here, unlucky one's don't. End of story." 

Molly stared at the counter space next to him, uncertain, as if debating whether or not to proceed. "It started as a church, you know,” Molly said, after a moment.

“I’m sorry?"

“The Priory Church of Saint Bartholomew. Some courtier to a king had traveled throughout the Mediterranean. Probably wanted to impress some rich benefactors with what he'd learned, things he'd seen and done. So, when he returned, he founded St Bartholomew the Great. I read about it when I first came down from Cambridge. I was so excited.”

“The parish services included caring for the poor and sick. And so, they created with it St Barts the Less, a minor hospital where people could come for help. Hope. Whatever they needed. People claimed that right on these grounds, miracles were performed. The lame were healed. The weak restored. Blind men were made to see. Even if none of it is true, it’s nice to think about. That people felt this was a place where they could be saved.

“It survived plagues and wars, the dissolution of the monasteries, somehow. All the other Churches around here were torn down or destroyed. Still. This one stayed. Made it, and made it through everything else, too. Part of it was damaged during the Blitz, but only a little. It’s sort of amazing, don’t you think?”

“What,” he bit out. “Is your point?”

She gathered her phone, her lab coat draped over her arm. “After all that, it’s still standing,” she shrugged.

She touched his elbow as she slipped out of the lab, her fingers trailing along his arm. “So are you.”

 

* * *

 

He emailed the findings to Bettina Mendelssohn.

 _Thank you, Mr. Holmes_ , she replied within 20 minutes. He imagined he understood some of what she felt: The pleasure of confirmation, pale in the grim face of veracity.

_It is difficult to hear, but I am glad to have the truth._

 

* * *

 


	5. Monday

Musty air. Leaden. Stifling. Sherlock sat up, opened the window for a breath. Outside, the traffic bleated and humidity pressed in. A bracing shower woke him from the bleary edges of half-sleep. 

He dressed quickly, hailing a cab and approaching the judiciary chambers adjacent to H.M. P. in Wormwood Scrubs. A familiar face met his in the waiting area beyond the hearing room.

“Why are you here?” he demanded of Greg Lestrade.

“Gotta come make a statement from time to time. Here, Belmarsh, Brixton, Wandsworth. My job involves a lot more than making sure you’re entertained.”

Precisely why he never asked about it.

Lestrade took a sip of his coffee, grimaced. “Some admin paperwork and a statement to give on a couple counts of vehicle theft. Also, Molly texted that you would be here this morning. Think she was worried.”

The clock on the faux-bois panel walls jittered in time. _Tick tick tick_. “She shouldn’t.”

Lestrade tossed the remainder of his coffee in a bin. “Yeah, well. Like it or not, you’ve got friends. They care about you. Especially that one.”

_Whatever you need._

“She’s got a job offer.” Words he hadn’t planned to say. “In Cambridge. She will, anyway. Ideal candidate.”

“No! Did she?” Lestrade let out a beleaguered sigh. “Good on her. Still. That’ll be a blow to Barts.”

He spun, annoyed. “You think she’d actually take it?”

Lestrade shrugged. “Why not? I might welcome a change like that. Tough these last few years."

“Most of your years have been _tough_ and you haven’t high-tailed it to the suburbs.”

“Haven’t gotten any cushy academic job offers, either.” Lestrade stuck his hands in his pockets, sighed. “I don’t blame her, though. London’s getting a harder and harder to be be. Expensive. Crowded. Winter’s shit, this summer’s been awful and hasn’t even properly begun. Nightmare getting through traffic at any time of the day.”

All true.

“I looked the case up after Molly mentioned,” Lestrade went on, changing the subject. “Piece of work, your guy. Not a small thing putting someone like that away. You can almost understand with assaults, crimes of passion. Especially where one party has been living on coke, booze and adrenaline for most of their adult life. That you can rationalize. But trying to kill your own family...Jesus.” He rubbed his chin in jaw, eyebrows lifting.

_The scream of guitars cut out. Medical personnel ushered the Hyde children. Sobbing._

_He stumbled out the door, shocked._

_An officer, rubbing his face, gray, exhausted. _Jesus Christ, this guy._ _

_Yeah._

_He’ll rot._

_Yeah._

_Reminds me of the kid._

_The brainiac?_

_Cut from the same cloth, I'm telling you. Convinced they can do no wrong. That the world revolves around them. Their presence is somehow a gift to anyone who crosses their path. Same personality, just put to opposite use._

The sound of heavy door closing jolted him from his long-ago reverie. “Jeremy Hyde has been diagnosed by three independent specialists as a classically presenting psychopath.”

“Don’t need a diagnosis to tell me that. Seen a lot of his type.”

A thought occurred to him. Sherlock turned his head. “What are his chances?”

“Chances of what?”

“Parole. Didn’t have time to look up the statistics.”

Lestrade thought about it. “Not good. Bad. Won’t be long wait though. Coupla weeks.”

Sherlock started. “What do you mean, _weeks_?”

Lestrade scoffed. “What, you thought it’d be in, out, and done ? It’s bureaucracy, not television. Need a while to sort these cases.”

“Of course I know that.” _Now._

From the end of the hall, the clerk announced the next case.

 

* * *

 

“The court now hears the testimony of Her Majesty’s inmate 894310, Mr. Jeremy Hyde.”

As far as he could tell, none of the arresting officers had attended. Almost no one he recognized. He sat in a central row, not overly close, not far removed. He wanted to observe what the years had done to this man.

Hyde had prepared a statement. He read from it with steady hands. He kept a short beard now, tusked with gray at the chin. He spoke clearly, though his voice was far from the booming thunder it had once been, shouting over traders and junior level colleagues, waiters at the Savoy, it remained strong.

Sherlock listened. The man who had, in so many ways, begun his career as an investigator of criminal activities, introduced himself, summarized his crime, ignoring the details in favor of popular excuses.  
“My abuse of alcohol and prescription narcotics, as well as cocaine and other stimulants, warped my mind and corrupted my decision-making.”

Sherlock suppressed the urge to groan audibly. Christ, the cliché.

“Paranoid, mentally-undone, and ashamed of what I had become, I made terrible choices. I will never be able to change that, or set right the lives I ruined. My family, and friends; my wife, my children.”

“I am guilty of my crimes, yes. That is true. I am a guilty man, but I am also a man who knows the value of rehabilitation. I have learned much from my mistakes, and would work to help others who have been in similar positions find their way to be members of society again. I hope you will bear that in mind as you reach your conclusions.”

“Thank you,” Jeremy Hyde offered, penitent. “And God bless.”

Jeremy Hyde spoke for less than four minutes. His words were spare, succinct, unsophisticated. But clever. Practiced. He was straightforward in confronting his past, and seemingly contrite in his demeanor. He paused in the correct places, bit his lip, allowed his voice to quiver, searched to some unseen redeemer above for the strength to go on.

Which was to say that it was an act.

Although older and grizzled, no longer quite the end of the 20th century picture of success he had been, Jeremy Hyde knew precisely who he was addressing, and how to do so. Whom to make eye contact with, who to avoid. 

Some lawyer or other spoke a few words. A social worker. Prison therapist. All duly deceived. If he felt any remorse at all, Sherlock supposed that it had been he was not more urgent in his actions that day, years before.

If Hyde knew his face, he made no sign of acknowledgement. He spared Sherlock a single glance, appraising, curious, then he was gone, returned to the confines of his cell and the cruelty of the prison-industrial system to await the decision of the parole board.

For once he held fast to Lestrade's opinion and experience, hoping the coming weeks would prove NSY's insight to be true (for once).

Sherlock watched Hyde vanish. He felt, all at once, the weight of the years that had gone between that day, and now.

“Mr. Holmes?” A young woman in a bright headscarf tied at the neck appeared at his elbow.

“My name is Melora. Melora Harari.”

“What can I help you with, Miss Harari.”

Her accent was soft. North London tinged by German and... Hebrew?

“Missus, actually. Harari is my husband’s name. I changed it when we were married six years ago. Before that I was–”

Blonde. Brown eyes. Age twenty-nine. “Melora Hyde.”

She nodded. Her headscarf caught in the breeze. “I wanted to thank you, Mr. Holmes. I was a very small girl when my father did these terrible things. I don't understand him. I never will. But what he did, it brought me to my life now. My husband, Yoni. He loves your blog, by the way.”

“I think you mean John Watson’s.”

“No—Well, yes, he loves that too. We both do. But he like the _Science of Deduction_ more. Engineer. So, nerd.” She smiled. In her arms, her child reached out a hand.

“Your son?”

“Yes. This is my youngest. He is three. His name is William.”

He nodded. “Hullo, William.”

“I named him for you," she explained. "You saved my life when I was a child. I have never forgotten that kind of mercy.”

He did not know what to say to that. He did not understand, did not _believe_ , in the quality of Mercy Melora Hyde meant. She had been a small girl, involved in a passably interesting case that occupied his time somewhere between organic chemistry and an increasingly-regular consumption of heroin. There had been no quality of mercy to his actions on his part. If anything, they had been selfish.

“It was not mercy that saved your life, Mrs. Harari,” he replied, finally, "but luck."

“Maybe not yours, Mr. Holmes.”

He did not know what to say to _that_ , either.

A slightly older child called something in Hebrew to her. She replied quickly in a firm though gentle voice. “My oldest,” she said, looking away from the older boy. She looked him in the eye and explained. “Jeremy.”

He blinked, taken aback. “Why?”

Melora Harari shifted her son in her arms. The child’s brown eyes and downy hair pressed close to her cheek. “After my father went to prison, I was unhappy a long time. But my family—my adoptive family, they helped me. Saved me from the terrible things that happened to my brother and sister. ‘Those who survive the sword find peace in the wilderness,'” she quoted.

“We have different perspectives on faith, Mrs. Harari. Forgive me if I find it difficult to understand why…” He looked away sharply. He huffed in annoyance. The sentiment of it. “Forgive me: You named your child for a man who murdered your mother and would have killed your siblings and yourself, if he had only been a little faster.”

The hall seemed much larger, and much more empty. Yoni Harari looked over, concern knit across his face.

He took a breath. It smelled of chamomile and lavender.

Melora looked at her son, and to him. “No. I named him for my father.”

 

* * *

 

The storm began miles, hours, later. All at once the wind changed. Pressure dropped. The sky took on a sickly, green-gray hue. People darted off the street. Headlights flickered on.

The rain started in spits and licks.

He walked.

He walked through Shepherd’s Bush and Kensington and Chelsea, passing the empty fifth and sixth and sevenths homes of Russian oligarchs, Emirate princes, and Korean moguls; passing the kind of wealth with the power to shift and bend and conform a world to their needs; passing through a changing, charging, polarizing London.

He walked through Wandsworth and Vauxhall, Lambeth and Southwark, dodging elated students and perturbed commuters. A dim, roar of thunder followed a distant flash of lightning. The rain was cool, trickling through his hair and down his collar. He was drenched soon, but walked, walked, walked. Every corner, shadowed and reflecting the sky, the city, the light, called to mind the work in progress, the half-assembled sculpture in Gallery M. Twisting moments of possibility, opening and ending, at every turn.

On Blackfriars Bridge, he stared at the muddled, misty Thames, watching the bones of another soulless monstrosity climb the sky beside the Shard and was no closer to understanding Jeremy Hyde, Melora Harari, or his own dissatisfied anxiety than when he had started.

 

* * *

 

A light was on in Baker Street. “My elected babysitter tonight?”

Molly turned a page in her book. She was not in her ill-fitting suit, he noted. “Concerned, is all.”

Irritation flashed. His pulse beat louder. “I’m not using,” he bit out, throwing his dripping blazer on a chairback.

“I’m glad,” Molly said, setting her novel aside. “But that’s not what I was worried about. You’re not yourself.”

What was there to say? He slumped into the couch.

She crossed her hands, folded them in her lap. The backs of her Camper Mary Jane’s sat flush against the coach, a trace of Cantabridgian crab grass stilling clinging to the soles. He felt furious at the timing of Molly outgrowing her job. The blog might be gone tomorrow, when murderers could find themselves on the street once more, when art and institution and memory were being lost to time and when London was outgrowing everything. Everyone.

He tore his eyes away from her, placing his hands on the edges of the desk and staring out the window.

“How did the hearing go?”

“I met Melora Hyde.”

Molly hesitated. “One of the children you saved.”

“Yes.”

“Hyde made a statement. Said he had been rehabilitated. Learned. Been treated for his addictions, which lead to his psychotic break.”

“Did they reach a decision?” Molly asked.

He waved a hand. “They won’t, not for some time yet. Few weeks. Lestrade thinks it’s unlikely.”

“He’d know, I suppose.”

“Doubtful. He knows very little.”

“He knew about you.”

He looked over his shoulder.

Molly went on, looking somewhere between her hands and the fireplace. “He knew you had potential to do good things. Great things. He was right about that.”

Rain sluiced down the windows. Leaves and trash pelted down the streets, battered by the winds.

“The night I interrupted Hyde, one of the arresting officers thought I was like him. Hyde.” He held himself stiff, agitated still even after hours of walking, pacing, thinking. His shirt was soaked with rain and sweat. He flexed and tensed his fingers against the edges of the table. “Addicts. Sociopathic, narcissists who knows himself to be above everyone else,” he spat. “Convinced of his own self-righteousness. Driven. Duplicitous. Willing to take whatever measures are necessary to see our goals to the ends. Prophetic how alike we are, isn’t it?”

Molly’s mouth rose, an insolent, unconvinced quirk. Her dark eyes never wavered. “I don’t think you’re like anyone.”

Her words from the “Despite what you may think, Molly, I haven’t changed.”

“False.” She looked him straight in the eye, now, rising to her feet. “You’re anxious. Irritable. Afraid. You snap at everyone and are bored to death of casework,” Molly summarized. “The only other time you’ve been like this, you were using. I don’t think you are though.”

Sherlock swallowed.

“I’m...preoccupied. There is a solar storm of unprecedented scale and severity pressing against the Earth’s exosphere. It could damage every computer and data center in the northern hemisphere. The blog would be gone. All records of my work. My friendship with John.”

“Possible,” Molly conceded. “Though, unlikely.”

“I look at this city and don’t recognize it.”

She gave him a sympathetic smile.

“I have an international reputation for doing the only work I’ve ever wanted, to some meaningful ends and no small amount of success yet I can’t bear it half the time. I keep hearing that awful song.”

“Not to mention my pathologist is leaving,” he grumbled.

“Just an interview," Molly corrected.

“Good. It’d be murder finding anyone with your artistic grasp for dissection.”

She smiled. Her cheeks flushed a little pink as she twirled a lock of her hair nervously around her finger. A spiral. A helix. A circle inside a circle.

He inhaled deeply. Closing his eyes, he brought his hands to his temple, massaging the skin and arterial juncture above the sphenoid bone and running his finger through his hair, overcome by a feeling he could not name. “It’s not the same,” he said finally.

“What isn’t the same?”

Everything. Nothing. “The work,” he answered, unfocused. He was lost in the vague, circular bigness of imprecise thoughts, and the spiraling helix of Molly’s hair. “The feeling of it, I suppose. I’ve never done this for the _goodness_ of it. The helping was a by-product of the rush. Derivative, not the function.”

“You really shouldn’t think and derive, you know.”

He looked up at her in annoyance. Her lips twisted. Irritating. Everything about her was irritating.

Everything from her set his nerves on end and made his stomach tense and pulse leap and he knew—had known on some level—that it was not _irritation_ which Molly inspired. The Molly Problem was a cipher vastly more complex, the results of which produced the same outcome. Again, and again, and again.

Her small, delicate fingers brushed against his hand. Molly never touched him. She kept a distance, always. Always.

“Can I tell you what I think?” She stared down, her eyes lingering on the places where her skin met his.

He nodded, waited for her to go on.

“Mary’s told me how you’ve been harassing John–”

Eyeroll. “I haven’t–”

She arched a brow, tipped her chin to the side, piqued.

He swallowed his comments. “You were saying?”

“She’s told me how you’ve been bothering John about the blog. Back ups. How much you’ve fixated on this idea of losing it.”

“I’m not—!” he began a second time, but silenced himself before Molly could object again.

“I think you are still satisfied by what you do,” she said, drawing a circle on the back of his wrist. “But it feels like less because you have started to...appreciate, maybe, that there can be more in your life than The Work. That you have people who love you, and you love them, and that internal calculus by which you have always ordered and rationalized your life…”

Molly Hooper met his eyes. The levity was gone, replaced by something weightier but no more tangible. “It doesn’t quite add up the way it used to, does it?”

Lunate. Triquetrum. Hamate. Metacarpal. The ghost sensation of her fingers along his skin stole his focus. Her words fell into him. He was both hyper-aware of her movements and her words, and not. In the same moment, he was suffused by a feeling he could not describe; was both intensely focused on Molly and utterly distracted by her at once.

 

 

“I think, Sherlock,” said Molly Hooper, who saw what so many, himself included, could not. “I think that you’ve outgrown that solitary life, the whole ‘alone protects me’ thing. That stoic personality. Those old traits and habits and wants.”

Her fingertip skated along the back of his palm in a loop that crossed back on itself. A leminscate curve. An octal figure. The symbol for infinity.

“And I think,” she said, voice soft, and low, and gentle in her deductions. “That you feel a bit lost because you don’t know how to _not_ be alone. Or what to do about it.”

She squeezed his hand. “Am I close?”

“Yes.” Her wrist was slim and fragile beneath the pads of his fingers. He drew a congruent circle along the back of her palm. Dragged his fingers along the ulna, skimming the faintly freckled epidermis.

He worried the nails of his opposite hand into his thigh. “Two small boys are alive today because I prevented their mother’s murder twenty years ago.”

“Two small boys,” Molly repeated. “Lots of other people, too.”

“She named the youngest one after me.”

Her mouth tipped up. “She named him Sherlock? Tough luck.”

“First name,” he added.

“Ah.” Her shoulders lifted gently. She twirled the end of her ponytail around her index finger. He watched, transfixed. “Will’s not so bad.”

“Molly?”

“Hmm?” she hummed.

He was uncertain of himself, of how to ask. Was it even a question, or an answer to? He did not know. “How long has it been like this?”

“I don’t know,” Molly said. She turned her palm up. He slid his hand to cover hers. Hand in hand, his skin to hers. “But a while now, I think.”

He nodded. He did not dare yet lift his gaze. It would have been too much, somehow. “I–didn’t realize,” he said. His pulse beat erratically. The rain had cooled him to the point of a chill but he felt overly warm now. Hot, even.

He looked up, finally, and found her expression soft, patient. Waiting.

 _Take your time_ , she seemed to say, as if they no longer required words to exchange what passed between them. He understood her meaning by the angle of her chin, the curve of her mouth, the reflection visible light in her large and luminous eyes. They found the light, and caught it. He marveled.

She dipped her chin in question. _Alright?_

He opened his mouth, but could not speak. _How do I do this?_ he silently asked, willing her to know. To understand. To see. Just as she always did.

She leaned in. Touched his cheek. _However you like._

 

* * *

 


	6. Tuesday

**Tuesday**

The sun poured through his window, the product of another day’s assault on the planet. 

Sherlock shifted on his side. He was adjusting. 

It had happened slowly, and without him fully conscious of his actions until he was there, pressed up against the moment as it opened. She had been there, too. And then had been closer. He had not expected it, and yet, somehow it seemed the only logical outcome. 

Molly Hooper breathed softly against the pillow she had stolen. Lifting a hand, hesitating only briefly, he touched her shoulder, traced the arc of her scapulae. He felt the dipping hollow of her spine. He focused on the texture of her back. Soft. Shockingly so. Something between the smoothness of silk and the feathery tickle of down. He was drawn to the sensory memory of how she had felt leveled tightly against him: the warm, solid press of skin to slickened skin. Her mouth on his, kissing; her mouth on his, not kissing, only touching, tasting, a single breath of air between them. 

Certainly, he had found it physiologically enjoyable, as satisfying as physical release could be. Only, more so. 

Other pleasures had taken him by surprise. The sounds Molly made in her throat when surprised by bliss: Gasps of breath, flushes of color in her skin, her involuntary reactions. The tensile wave of pleasure, breaking off at the apex and crashing back in smaller peaks to equilibrium. Her rosy cheeks. The tickle of her hair on his chest. The quality of her patience. A look he took to mean wild, heated abandon. Another, unadulterated joy. That was good. More than good. More. 

His fingers trailed up the length of her back and down again, finding constellations of freckles in the dusty ivory epidermis. 

He expected to feel fear that they had not used protection. He did not. Some wordless agreement transpired in the moment he touched his mouth to the bare skin of her abdomen, as she wound her fingers in his hair, pulling his gaze up to meet hers. In that riparian moment, on the edge of something furious and fast-moving, he let himself be pulled in. Inundated. He gave in to the tumult and the roar, the humid, stifling, primal loosing of control and consciousness. By the deal that was not a deal, was an _understanding_. It was unnerving. Unnerving, but not altogether unwanted. 

There were, he saw at once and at last, no indeterminate variables with Molly. Or perhaps, it was only his estimation that had changed. From the infinite pool of predictive and volatile human behavior had tripped a small, considerate, clumsily brilliant and sweetly patient brunette, who represented, to him, for him, for _them_ , an array of possible outcomes, each rational and real; a set of known value. A factor become a constant. 

Heavy lids, dreamy with sleep, lifted. He lay his palm against the small of her back, momentarily fascinated by the extremity of their sexual dimorphism. The distance between the nail of his thumb and pad of his little finger covered almost the entirety of her waist. The reality of experience, rather than detracting, rather than distracting, supplemented the biology. Interesting, he was pleased to discover. 

Molly drew a breath. The corners of her mouth lifted. She blinked at sleep as he edged in closer, pressing his mouth against the line of her mouth, felt it arc into a transcendent curve. He dropped his mouth along the plane of her neck, finding the pulse point tucked, there, as feather-soft skin sloped away into her faintly freckled shoulder. 

He lay there, breathing in the scent of her, the scent of _themness_ , sated but stirring. She reached out, slinking a leg over his hip. Slipped her arm underneath his shoulder. Set her chin atop his head. He smoothed his palm up the length of her back. Closer. Closer.

“You’re being appallingly sentimental,” Molly hummed into his hair, voice roughened from little sleep, but teasing, and full of mirth. “Compose yourself at once.” 

His phone buzzed. 

The faint sound of construction on Marylebone Road bled in through the still-open windows. 

Molly ran her fingers through his hair. 

He smiled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story grew out of a segment I heard on NPR’s TED Radio Hour. One of the stories for that day was a Harvard psychologist’s talk on how people are pretty terrible at anticipating how they will grow and change as individuals across their lifespan. Not specifically how they will change, but that they will change. People pretty much assume that who they are today will be who they are in 10 years. And, of course, when questioned about who they were 10 years ago, people always say, “Oh, actually, yeah, these things are all different.” Title comes from a line of a line used to summarize this research—“Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they are finished.” [Here’s the transcript, if you’re interested](https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_you_are_always_changing/transcript?language=en#t-248316). This isn't quite the story I intended to write, but I'm happy with it. Mostly. 
> 
> I read like 20 articles about nucleosynthesis these are the things I do for you guys. 
> 
> Solar flares can, and have, in fact, [caused widespread data disruption](http://www.onthemedia.org/story/on-the-media-2015-06-26) within living memory. [NPR, On the Media, June 2015]
> 
> In 2013, [several paintings stolen](http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/22/us-dutch-heist-idUSBRE96L0JL20130722) from the Rotterdam Kunsthal were found to have been burned in a Romanian oven by a woman hoping to protect her son from being arrested for his involvement. Yikes. [Reuters, BBC, NYTimes, 2013]
> 
> The [sculpture described](http://blog.art21.org/2008/09/04/matthew-ritchie-the-morning-line/#.VoVh9xorLBI) at Marta Razvanovitch’s gallery is the The Morning Line by Matthew Richie. I love it. 
> 
> [Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Part I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzlMeTxVdH8) is a great song off the eponymous album by The Flaming Lips. 
> 
> Molly’s line “maybe it’s the weather, or something like that” is a lyric from an old Bob Dylan tune, Mama You Been on my Mind. [Jeff Buckley](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeUEDMgAxIc) does a great version. 
> 
> [London, changed](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jun/28/london-the-city-that-ate-itself-rowan-moore)
> 
> The Atlas of Microscopic Particles is a pretty rad resource.


End file.
